Amazon is famous for the Working Backwards PR/FAQ process, but where did this process come from? In the early 2000s, Steve Kessel and I were building Amazon’s digital media business. We’d present plans to Jeff Bezos, using our MBA toolset, which includes spreadsheets with pro forma P&Ls, market size projections, SWOT analysis, etc…
Jeff would read and listen carefully, study our spreadsheets, then always ask the same question:
“Where are the mock-ups?”
We were showing Jeff the big picture. We were focused on the future market opportunities in digital music, movies, and e-books, but Jeff wanted to see the actual customer experience before funding the project further. He wanted to understand exactly how the customer would use the product from end to end: home page, search, detail pages, payment, playback, etc.
Steve and I hadn’t done that work. We were focused on catching up to Apple and were in a race against time, so we wanted to start hiring and launch.
What we weren’t asking ourselves was how our products and services would be better, faster, or cheaper than the alternatives.
So we’d go back to the drawing board, build mock-ups, and return. Then, Jeff would ask questions like: “How many e-books will be in our store? How much will they cost? How long will it take to download a book?”
These were details that didn’t apply to the mock-up process. Furthermore, given how long it takes to make a set of mock-ups, our time between meetings with Jeff was becoming weeks, not days. At this phase of the new product innovation process, we needed a lightweight tool that didn’t require special design skills. A tool that forced us to address Jeff’s detailed questions but also enabled rapid ideation and iteration.
Jeff suggested that we stop using PowerPoint and spreadsheets and start writing narrative documents that focus on a single new product idea, describing it from end to end: features, functions, price, etc.
After our first meeting with narratives, we knew we had found a better way. We were having nuanced conversations about each new product idea, and we iterated much faster.
But we also needed a tool that forced us to think from the customer’s POV. This is when Jeff came up with the idea to write narratives as a press release and a series of frequently asked questions (FAQs). He saw this as the best way to clarify the customer experience and value before building anything. This is how the “Working Backwards PR FAQ” was born.
The power of the Working Backwards process lies in its ability to put the author in the customer’s shoes. Then, the iterative process aligns Execs and teams behind a single, detailed vision of the finished product before building it. Eventually, the process became a core part of Amazon, and it was used to build products like Kindle, Alexa, Prime Video, and AWS.
Good news… anyone can master the Working Backwards PR/FAQ process — we just launched our new online training course: https://lnkd.in/g_G7SXyT
