“We tried them out for more than a year,” write the authors, “but fitness functions never really delivered on their promise for a couple of important reasons. By pointing each team in the right direction and alerting them early if they drifted off course, fitness functions were supposed to align the team uniquely to its goals. Working Backwards also explains the problems with Amazon’s idea of having a single equation or “forcing function” that could measure team performance in a single figure.Ĭustom-tailored fitness functions were equations which combined the directional components of each aspect of a team’s velocity. Thus, ‘single-threaded leaders’ and ‘separable, single-threaded teams’ were born.” Why Amazon’s Famous ‘Forcing Function’ Didn’t Work Why the odd name? The authors explain: “Nothing catchy came to mind, so we leaned into our geekdom and chose the computer science term ‘single-threaded,’ meaning you only work on one thing at a time. The book explains how Amazon now puts more emphasis on concept of a “a single threaded team.” That means a team that can operate independently. And in any event, Amazon didn’t have enough leaders with those kinds of CEO-type skills. “But we later came to realize that the biggest predictor of a team’s success was not whether it was small but whether it had a leader with the appropriate skills, authority, and experience to staff and manage a team whose sole focus was to get the job done.” Many tasks couldn’t be broken down into pieces small enough to be handled by a small two-pizza team. “We all agreed at the outset that a smaller team would work better than a larger one,” the authors write. It was a seductive idea, but it didn’t work as well as Amazon had hoped. Why The Famous Two-Pizza Teams Didn’t Work So Wellįor instance, Working Backwards explains why Amazon now puts much less emphasis on its famous two-pizza teams. It gives a blow-by-blow account of why Amazon arrived at the process, including what went wrong along the way.
But the book is not just a tale of triumph and how wonderful Amazon was or is. Working Backwards explains the process in detail.
But along with SRI’s NABC’s process, it is one of the best. The PR/FAQ and the metrics are reviewed by a high level committee that decides whether to proceed and, if so, how much resources will be assigned to the proposal.Īmazon’s PR/FAQ is not the only effective strategic planning process for the digital era.
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