Working backwards from the customer

Amazon is built on top of fine grained services that have a strong ownership model – you build it, you run it. These services are created by small teams to make it very easy to innovate. You can imagine this to look like a large group of startups within the walls of a bigger company. Each service needs to meet the needs of the customer, be it an internal or external one.

To ensure this we use a process called “Working Backwards” in which you start with your customer and work your way backwards to the actual service or product. The goal of this process is to drive simplicity through a continuous, explicit customer focus. Thomas Lobinger will share how this process worked out for him at Amazon and what you can learn from this for your own projects.