Oct 19 2:43 pm

Quora: What is Amazon’s approach to product development and product management?

There is an approach called “working backwards” that is widely used at Amazon. We try to work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it. While working backwards can be applied to any specific product decision, using this approach is especially important when developing new products or features.

For new initiatives a product manager typically starts by writing an internal press release announcing the finished product. The target audience for the press release are the new/updated product’s customers, which can be retail customers or internal users of a tool or technology. Internal press releases are centered around the customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions.

If the benefits listed don’t sound very interesting or exciting to customers, then perhaps they’re not (and shouldn’t be built). Instead, the product manager should keep iterating on the press release until they’ve come up with benefits that actually sound like benefits. Iterating on a press release is a lot less expensive than iterating on the product itself (and quicker!).

Once the project moves into development, the press release can be used as a touchstone. The product team can ask themselves, “Are we building what is in the press release?” If they find they’re spending time building things that aren’t in the press release (overbuilding), they need to ask themselves why. This keeps product development focused on achieving the customer benefits and not building extraneous stuff that takes longer to build, takes resources to maintain, and doesn’t provide real customer benefit (at least not enough to warrant inclusion in the press release).

(via Quora)

Great idea.

41 notes

  1. mginnard reblogged this from superamit
  2. curt-cushing reblogged this from jeffgiddens
  3. 6ixpassions said: It is also the full opposite way how Apple are designing products. “If I would have asked what my customers want they would have tell me a faster horse.” - Henry Ford.
  4. flackadelic reblogged this from superamit
  5. seanjohnson reblogged this from superamit
  6. jeffgiddens reblogged this from superamit and added:
    This is not the way it should happen, this is the way it HAS to happen.
  7. joshuanguyen reblogged this from superamit
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  9. superamit posted this
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