Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

by Colin Bryar

the Analyze stage is all about developing a comprehensive understanding of what drives your metrics. Until you know all the external factors that impact the process, it will be difficult to implement positive changes. The objective in this stage is separating signals from noise in data and then identifying and addressing root causes. Why is it we can pick 100 items per hour in a fulfillment center on one shift and 30 items per hour on another? Why are we able to display pages in under 100 milliseconds most of the time yet some pages take 10 seconds to display? Why are customer service contacts per order always higher on Mondays than on other days of the week? When Amazon teams come across a surprise or a perplexing problem with the data, they are relentless until they discover the root cause. Perhaps the most widely used technique at Amazon for these situations is the Correction of Errors (COE) process, based upon the “Five Whys” method developed at Toyota and used by many companies worldwide.