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At Amazon, a product can begin with a press release for something that does not exist yet. The team imagines the launch-day announcement, asks whether it gives a specific customer a compelling reason to change behavior, and uses a paired FAQ to test what would have to be true to deliver that promise. Only after the customer value and the path to build are clear does the team decide whether to proceed.
What “working backwards” means
Working backwards is Amazon’s customer-first approach to product development: start with a particular customer, an unmet need, and the experience the company wants that customer to have; then reason from that outcome toward a product, the work required to deliver it, and a launch. It does not mean planning backward from a shipping date.
The sequence reverses a common feature-first pattern—idea, technology, features, then marketing. The intended sequence is closer to customer problem, desired experience, customer-facing promise, questions and constraints, product design, development, launch, and iteration. Amazon describes “start with the customer and work backwards” as a leadership principle; it says teams should pay attention to competitors but focus their attention on customers (Amazon’s account of its Day 1 culture; Amazon Pay on customer focus).
The method is not simply a writing exercise. Its central document, the PR/FAQ, links a customer promise to research, product definition, operational design, technical feasibility, economics, and a decision about whether the idea deserves investment. It is a way to make the customer’s problem and the organization’s assumptions explicit before substantial resources are committed.
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What goes into an Amazon PR/FAQ?
The press release makes the customer promise concrete
The press release is written as if the product has already launched. It should identify the customer and problem, explain what the product does, show why it is meaningfully better than existing alternatives, and give the customer a reason to care or change behavior. Former Amazon executive Colin Bryar describes it as a short, customer-readable account centered on the problem, solution, and reason to switch (Bryar on the Working Backwards method).
A useful test is whether a reader can understand the benefit without decoding internal project language. “A new recommendation engine uses machine learning” describes a capability. “Readers can find their next book without sorting through thousands of titles” states a possible customer benefit. The latter is still only a promise until customer evidence supports it.
The FAQ brings the promise into contact with reality
The FAQ asks what customers, press, executives, finance, legal and compliance, operations, engineering, sales, support, security, and supply-chain teams would need to know. It turns attractive language into questions that can expose missing evidence or capabilities:
- How will the product work, and what must the company build or change?
- What will it cost, and what assumptions drive the economics?
- What happens when it fails, and what risks could make it unsafe or unusable?
- What customer behavior is assumed, and how will adoption be measured?
- What is the minimum scope that can deliver the promised experience?
- Which constraints are fundamental, and which might be solved later?
Amazon’s AWS startup guidance also discusses a user manual as a way to define how customers will use a product, so a working-backwards package can extend beyond the PR/FAQ itself (AWS guidance on working backwards).
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Why write before building?
The core rationale is cheap learning before expensive commitment. A document and its review can reveal a weak benefit, a problem customers do not consider important, an unclear proposition, unrealistic economics, missing operational capabilities, regulatory or privacy concerns, an overlarge feature set, or a dependency on technology that is not available. A persuasive press release cannot establish demand by itself; the FAQ and supporting evidence have to test its assumptions.
Amazon says an idea can be revised, delayed, or set aside after this work. Stopping is not an accidental outcome: avoiding development on a poorly understood idea can be a successful decision (Amazon on its culture and working-backwards process). This makes the method as much a resource-allocation mechanism as an innovation mechanism.
How the process works in practice
The outline below synthesizes Amazon’s public descriptions; it is not a claim that every team uses an identical checklist. Amazon’s materials describe the approach across different organizations, and its teams may adapt it to their circumstances (Amazon on Day 1 culture; Amazon Ads on product management; AWS product-development guidance).
- Identify the customer and problem. Specify whose frustration or unmet need matters; avoid definitions as broad as “everyone who shops online.”
- Describe the desired experience. Define what should become easier, better, safer, or possible for that customer.
- Draft the press release. State the customer-facing promise as if the product had launched. If the benefit is hard to explain plainly, the idea may not yet be clear.
- Write the FAQ and supporting material. Explore customer questions as well as technical, operational, financial, legal, and strategic constraints.
- Gather evidence and test assumptions. Use the evidence appropriate to the question: behavior and usage data, support contacts, research, interviews, prototype tests, and analysis of alternatives or economics.
- Circulate drafts to people with relevant expertise. Invite reviewers who can question the customer case and the work required across functions.
- Hold a narrative review and revise. Address ambiguity, weak evidence, unanswered questions, and unrealistic assumptions in the document.
- Decide whether to build, revise, or stop. Make the resource decision only after the customer promise and delivery path have been examined.
- Build, test, launch, measure, and iterate. The document informs the work; it does not replace product development or learning after launch.
What happens in the review room?
In the narrative-review format, participants read the document silently before discussing it. The written argument, rather than a polished slide presentation, becomes the shared object of scrutiny. Reviewers can challenge vague language, unsupported claims, missing details, and assumptions that cross-functional teams may see differently. The author’s task is to improve the document, not merely defend the first draft.
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BookMatcher: a retrospective on a weak proposition
In a 2021 University of Washington Foster School of Business presentation, former Amazon executive Jennifer Cast used BookMatcher as an example of a product that preceded the working-backwards mechanism. BookMatcher reportedly recommended books based on users’ ratings; it failed and Amazon removed it. Cast’s retrospective point was that a customer-facing press release and FAQ might have exposed earlier that the customer proposition was weak or unclear (GeekWire’s account of Cast’s presentation, January 13, 2021).
This is not a complete, independently verified postmortem, and it cannot establish that a PR/FAQ would certainly have prevented the failure. The example illustrates the method’s intended value: surface reasons an idea may not work before the organization invests heavily, rather than treating a document as a guarantee.
Amazon Books: six weeks of work before a physical store
Amazon Books made the method tangible because Amazon had to translate an online bookselling identity into a physical retail experience. A store could not simply reproduce a website: it had to give customers a reason to visit and connect discovery, inventory, merchandising, economics, and service in a physical setting.
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Cast’s account of the PR/FAQ for Amazon’s first physical bookstore shows the labor involved. It took more than six weeks; she spent at least 120 hours writing; the document went through 12 drafts; and meetings took roughly 10 hours. She began with the press release, found it weak, and moved to the FAQ, where unanswered questions revealed gaps. She also developed “givens”—mandatory characteristics for the store—and consulted research, finance, and technology colleagues to make the concept more concrete (GeekWire’s report of Cast’s account).
The example underlines a trade-off: working backwards can move considerable effort into the pre-development phase. Those hours are not a shortcut around hard product decisions; they are a way of bringing those decisions forward. Cast’s account does not, by itself, establish the store’s ultimate profitability or prove that the method caused a particular business outcome.
Customer obsession is not simply asking for feature requests
Customer evidence can come from direct requests, but working backwards need not mean building whatever customers say they want. Teams can combine observed behavior, complaints, support data, usage patterns, interviews, surveys, prototypes, and informed judgment about needs customers have not yet articulated. The important distinction is between a grounded inference about a customer problem and a company starting with its own capability and inventing a customer rationale afterward.
Amazon says customer input can include direct requests and invention by teams close to customers. AWS has stated that approximately 90% of AWS features come directly from customer needs, with the rest emerging from teams positioned to invent for customers. That is an AWS-specific company claim, not a figure that should be generalized to every Amazon business (Amazon’s account of Day 1 culture).
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The customer is not literally in every review room. Employees select, interpret, and prioritize evidence on the customer’s behalf. That makes it important to ask whose behavior is represented, which customers are missing from the data, who defines the problem, and whether hierarchy can override inconvenient evidence. The process can give customer needs a stronger place in a decision without removing organizational power or judgment.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.From PR/FAQ to a launch customers value
In a 2021 shareholder letter, Amazon used the term “Minimum Loveable Product” (MLP), distinguishing a launch customers will value from one that merely functions. The idea is to make the core experience strong enough for adoption without waiting for every possible feature. The letter cautions against both launching something customers reject and delaying until an opportunity passes (Amazon’s 2021 shareholder letter).
MLP is Amazon’s framing in that letter, not a universally accepted replacement for “minimum viable product.” Neither label removes the need to test the actual experience. A PR/FAQ helps define the promise and scope; prototypes and post-launch behavior help establish whether the product delivers value.
What working backwards cannot do
A disciplined document improves the quality of a decision; it does not guarantee a successful product. Teams can still misread a market, execute poorly, face technical limits, misprice an offer, lose distribution, encounter regulatory change, or launch at the wrong time. Customers may simply be indifferent, and operational complexity may be greater than the early plan anticipated. Amazon itself says a strong PR/FAQ does not guarantee that an idea will launch or succeed (Amazon on its working-backwards process).
The document can also create false confidence. A polished narrative can make a guess look like a fact; selective evidence can reinforce a predetermined idea; and executive enthusiasm can be mistaken for proof of demand. Writing is useful when it exposes uncertainty, not when it disguises it.
- Marketing copy in place of a testable promise: Make the benefit specific enough to examine, rather than relying on claims such as “revolutionary” or “seamless.”
- An overly broad customer definition: Specify who has the problem and in what circumstances.
- Company capability dressed up as customer demand: Start from evidence about a customer need, not a technology looking for a use.
- Stated preference treated as behavior: Compare what people say with what they do where possible.
- An evasive FAQ: Address uncomfortable questions about economics, risks, operations, and failure.
- A one-time approval artifact: Revisit assumptions as evidence changes and define who owns post-launch measures.
- Over-specification before validation: Keep the proposed solution proportional to what is known about the problem.
- Template as substitute for culture: A document cannot create sound decision rights, representative customer evidence, or a willingness to stop.
How a smaller organization can adapt the method
A startup or small team does not need Amazon’s scale or infrastructure to make the customer promise explicit. The following is a lightweight adaptation, not an official Amazon template. Use it when a product decision is consequential enough that a little structured writing could prevent expensive rework.
A compact working-backwards packet
- One-page customer-facing press release: Include the customer and problem, product promise, three or four concrete benefits, and availability or price if known. Do not present an invented customer quote as real.
- One-page external FAQ: Answer who the product is for, what it solves, how it differs from alternatives, what it costs, and what happens if it does not work.
- One-page internal FAQ: Explain what must be built and operated, what assumptions drive economics, what could make the product unsafe or unusable, what the smallest valuable launch includes, and what would cause the team to stop.
- Evidence checklist: Use relevant behavioral data, interviews, support tickets, demand signals, prototype tests, competitor alternatives, unit economics, operational constraints, and legal, privacy, or security review.
- Launch metric sheet: State the expected customer behavior, the measure that will indicate whether it occurred, the owner, and the decision the result will inform.
Use the packet to make a decision, not to justify one
After review, choose explicitly:
- Build when the customer promise is compelling and the main constraints are manageable.
- Revise when the problem looks important but the solution, evidence, or economics remain unclear.
- Stop when the benefit is weak, key assumptions are unsupported, or the necessary investment is disproportionate.
Match the effort to the risk
A full PR/FAQ process is most useful for costly engineering or operational commitments, cross-functional launches, products involving trust or compliance, uncertain new businesses, and work that depends on several internal systems. It can be excessive for a small reversible experiment, a low-cost prototype, a minor interface change, or a case where rapid market testing is cheaper than extended internal debate. The goal is not to make every decision wait for a long document; it is to make expensive uncertainty visible before it becomes more expensive.
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