Oh yes: I'm super super super excited to dig into Working Backwards. goodreads.com/book/show/5313
My one sentence pitch: it's the first book that describes how Amazon REALLY works internally, written by insiders who were in the room when the techniques were invented.
Conversation
This book is amazing so far (am at Chapter 3, and can’t put it down).
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Hmm, seems like two pizza teams no longer exist at Amazon, and they haven’t for some time.
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The most interesting thing about Amazon’s decentralised execution style is how different it is from, say, Apple’s, which is tightly coupled vertical teams.
But Amazon’s business necessitates it; they are in more industries and in more product categories than Apple.
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Amazon isn’t fully decoupled, of course:
Some teams, like Payments, must be coupled (they see this as a necessary tax).
The STL idea worked best with product dev teams (doesn’t apply to legal, retail, HR, etc)
Transitioning to this model was painful as hell.
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I’m now at the chapter where they talk about Narratives, and I’m so here for this.
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Quick update on this: Working Backwards is everything I wanted it to be. Bryar and Carr make a coherent, believable case for how Amazon is able to do the things it does.
(They also give enough context, and tell enough colourful stories, to tell you how each technique emerged!)
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I’m thinking of writing a summary, but it probably won’t be comprehensive. This is a tree book, not a branch book, and thus it is difficult to summarise.
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I’ve written a comprehensive summary of Chapter 6, on how Amazon measures its business here: holistics.io/blog/how-amazo
I’m still thinking of ways to apply some of these ideas.
Oh, and, yes: I THOUGHT I was operationally rigorous.
I no longer think so.
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