Collaborative Working Backwards Process

The Collaborative Working Backwards process facilitates innovation at scale

Background

Most companies struggle to build a culture of innovation. Many technology solutions fail to gain customer traction. Good ideas don’t always make it through the product development process. Most teams don’t have an easy-to-adopt process to enable close collaboration amongst all functions, Product, Engineering, Science and Design. Many companies and teams talk about innovation, but don’t have the tools to effectively innovate. 

Having worked in 3 different organizations within Amazon, I have led a multitude of teams on a dozen North Star and 3-year Visions. In doing so, I have tried out different processes to facilitate these vision workshops. The Collaborative Working Backwards framework is built with a collection of tried-and-true tools to effectively foster cross-functional collaboration and create customer-focused think big solutions. 

Many innovation processes available require high cost of adoption (time, resource, training, etc.). The CWB framework boils down to the 3-6 time-tested components that are modular and flexible, and can be applied to projects of any scale, from feature updates to North Star visions. 

My Role

As the Principal Designer, I have led many a North Star vision initiatives. I provided my input to processes developed by other teams. Over time, I developed my own framework with the tools that I use often and find most effective in projects that I lead. During my time at Amazon Search, I published and led practice of my framework, which is becoming the innovation process for Amazon Search. 

Impact

A number of product teams within Amazon utilized the Collaborative Working Backwards process, including the Amazon Lists team (featured in this portfolio), Amazon Share team, Search Navigation team, Amazon Pharmacy and so on. Product, Engineering and Science partners appreciate the early collaboration and tools to spark think-big ideas. Design teams feel more empowered with greater influence on innovation. Amazon leaders see significant improvement to the quality output as the result of adopting the CWB process.