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AWS Working Backwards

Amazon's Working Backwards methodology starts with the customer and works backward to the solution. It emphasizes writing as thinking, with the PR/FAQ and 6-Pager as core artifacts.

Profile Variants

Both profiles start the same way — with the human-authored Press Release, the founding artifact of Working Backwards. Amazon classifies decisions by reversibility (one-way vs. two-way doors), not by a product/feature taxonomy — so the profiles are named by the door. The door sets the ceremony; the scale picks the deepening tool (both are optional in both profiles):

Profile Founding Document Ceremony Typical For
aws-one-way-door Press Release 6-pager decision narrative required; formal decision meeting gates build spend Hard-to-reverse bets: new product lines, public commitments, major investments
aws-two-way-door Press Release Iterative PR/FAQ review is the only formal gate; 6-pager optional Reversible bets: features, experiments, incremental improvements

Optional post-FAQ deepening in either profile: MRD (market validation — typical at product scale) or OpportunitySpec (discovery canvas — typical at feature scale). For the latter, see OpportunitySpec Framework.

The Flow

One-Way Door Flow (PR/FAQ Start)

AWS One-Way Door Flow

Two-Way Door Flow (PR/FAQ Start)

AWS Two-Way Door Flow

Key Principles

  1. Customer Obsession: Start with the customer and work backwards
  2. Write First: Document the vision before building
  3. PR/FAQ: Write the press release announcing the product's launch
  4. Challenge Assumptions: Use FAQ to surface gaps and concerns
  5. Narrative-Driven: Use 6-pagers for decision-making
  6. Iterate: The PR/FAQ goes through many drafts — iteration is the method, not a failure of the first pass

AI-Native Working Backwards

The methodology's division of labor maps cleanly onto AI-native building — and gets stronger, because AI makes the expensive parts of authenticity cheap:

Working Backwards element Who does it Why
Press Release Human The vision seed — taste and intent are the inputs AI cannot supply. Written first, by hand, on purpose.
FAQ Agents synthesize, human curates Agents research the market, competitors, and constraints to stress-test the PR's claims; the human decides which answers survive.
Desirability evidence Agents build, humans watch users A clickable demo of the announced experience (hardcoded data, no backend) is minutes of agent work. Attach it to the PR appendix — "watch people try it" beats "we believe."
Feasibility evidence Agents spike The FAQ's "can we build it?" answers cite a vertical-slice proof-of-concept against real data — hours of agent work now, not weeks. Assertion-free feasibility.
Evaluation LLM-as-a-Judge Each document is scored against the profile's leadership-principle rubrics between drafts, so iteration has a feedback signal cheaper than a review meeting.
PR/FAQ review, decision meeting Human The gates stay human. The 6-pager review is the one-way-door judgment call — precisely the decision AI evidence can inform but not make.

Two disciplines keep this honest:

  • Label the evidence. AI makes artifacts look real for free, so every appendix item is marked by what it proves — a mockup illustrates, a demo tests desirability, a spike proves feasibility. Never let a facade cash a working-system claim.
  • Iterate before the gate, not after. Cheap synthesis and cheap evaluation mean the PR/FAQ can go through its ten drafts in days. Spend the iterations where Amazon always did — on the vision documents — so the one-way-door meeting decides on a hardened narrative, and the post-gate build (UXD, TRD, TPD) starts from settled intent.

VisionSpec Mapping

AWS Artifact VisionSpec Type Purpose
Press Release Press Founding artifact — human-authored vision announcing the solution; written first
FAQ FAQ Challenges claims, surfaces gaps; absorbs the business case
Business Case deep-dive MRD (optional) Post-FAQ market validation when the risk warrants it (Amazon has no MRD; the FAQ carries the case)
PRFAQ Combined PRD Product requirements derived from narrative
6-Pager Narrative Decision document for the one-way-door gate
Design Doc TRD Technical architecture
Test Plan TPD Test cases, automation, quality gates
Ops Review IRD Infrastructure and operations

Using the aws-one-way-door Profile

Initialize a Project

multispec init my-product --profile aws-one-way-door

Write the Press Release (Founding Artifact)

multispec draft press -p my-product

The press release is human-authored — it is the vision seed, not a synthesis product. Write it first; everything else works backward from it.

Synthesize Working Backwards Documents

# Generate FAQ challenging the Press Release
multispec synthesize faq -p my-product

# Optional: deepen the FAQ's business case with market validation
# (or `synthesize opportunity-spec` for the feature-scale discovery canvas)
multispec synthesize mrd -p my-product

# Generate PRD from Working Backwards artifacts
multispec synthesize prd -p my-product

# Generate 6-Pager Narrative for the decision gate
multispec synthesize narrative-6p -p my-product

# Generate technical specs (post-gate)
multispec synthesize trd -p my-product
multispec synthesize tpd -p my-product  # Test plan
multispec synthesize ird -p my-product  # Infrastructure

Evaluate Documents

# Evaluate Press Release against Leadership Principles
multispec eval press -p my-product

# Check readiness
multispec status -p my-product

Templates

Press Release Template

The Press Release template includes:

  • Headline: One sentence capturing customer benefit
  • Subheadline: Target customer and key value
  • Problem: Customer pain point
  • Solution: How the product solves it
  • Quote (Spokesperson): Internal vision
  • Customer Journey: How to get started
  • Quote (Customer): External validation
  • Call to Action: Next steps

FAQ Template

The FAQ template covers:

  • Customer Questions: What customers will ask
  • Internal Questions: Stakeholder concerns
  • Technical Questions: Implementation challenges
  • Business Questions: Market and financial viability

6-Pager Template

The 6-Pager template follows Amazon's structure:

  • Introduction and context
  • Goals and tenets
  • State of the business
  • Lessons learned
  • Strategic priorities
  • Appendix with data

Rubric Categories

Each document type carries its own LLM-as-a-Judge rubric (structured-evaluation format), grounded in the Amazon Leadership Principles — all 16 are carried in the profiles' methodology metadata, and the most judgeable teachings are encoded as rubric categories: economic sustainability in the press rubric (Customer Obsession includes economics), disconfirmation rigor in the FAQ rubric (Are Right, A Lot: work to disconfirm; Earn Trust: vocally self-critical), the ownership horizon in the 6-pager rubric (the personal-money test), and door-specific decision-reversibility criteria in the PRD rubric (Bias for Action). Cross-cutting themes:

Category Weight Description
Working Backwards Fidelity 20% Starts with customer, not technology
Customer Clarity 20% Specific customer segment and problem
Decision Reversibility 15% Two-way vs one-way door decisions
Bias for Action 15% Speed of execution considered
Long-Term Thinking 15% Sustainable competitive advantage
Frugality 10% Resource efficiency
Deep Dive 5% Data-driven analysis

Example Workflow (aws-one-way-door)

# 1. Initialize project
multispec init checkout-redesign --profile aws-one-way-door

# 2. Human writes the Press Release — the founding artifact
multispec draft press -p checkout-redesign
# ... iterate on the announced customer experience ...
multispec eval press -p checkout-redesign
multispec approve press -p checkout-redesign

# 3. Synthesize FAQ to stress-test the press release
multispec synthesize faq -p checkout-redesign
multispec eval faq -p checkout-redesign
multispec approve faq -p checkout-redesign

# 4. Optional: deepen the business case with market validation
#    (or `synthesize opportunity-spec` for the feature-scale discovery canvas)
multispec synthesize mrd -p checkout-redesign

# 5. Synthesize PRD from Working Backwards artifacts
multispec synthesize prd -p checkout-redesign
multispec eval prd -p checkout-redesign

# 6. Generate 6-Pager for the one-way-door decision meeting
multispec synthesize narrative-6p -p checkout-redesign

# 7. Post-gate: human authors UXD
multispec draft uxd -p checkout-redesign

# 8. Synthesize TRD
multispec synthesize trd -p checkout-redesign

# 9. Check status
multispec status -p checkout-redesign

Reference Materials

For deeper understanding of AWS Working Backwards methodology, see:

See Also