Habit: Quantify

September 17, 2020 Wendy-Lynn

This article is an excerpt from my longer piece Habits: Five Product Best Practices Learned at Amazon.

Quantify

“If you think you know something about a subject, try to put a number on it. If you can, then maybe you know something about it. If you cannot, then perhaps you should admit to yourself that your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.” -Lord Kelvin (paraphrased), 1893

The Learning

Everyone at Amazon is taught to quantify and measure how their product meets the customer’s best interest. To prove their team is delivering results, a PM must measure the inputs and outputs of the product. Colleagues reinforce this quantification culture when they challenge you to provide an ROI for your ideas. Bias for action drives everyone to quantify what has been accomplished. When you disagree and commit, you must come to the table quantifying your position, backing up your argument with data.

Building Trust

PMs who can quantify and measure problems and opportunities can better prioritize and tell a story. You earn trust when you can quantify the “why” behind your actions. Developing at least a quick ROI for a request, helps PMs prioritize and earn the respect of the teams they must influence; they must be able to explain why a request supersedes existing priorities. Engineering partners should—and will—push back on improperly quantified requests.

The Amazon Systems in Support

At Amazon, Weekly Business Review (WBR) metrics review meetings require PMs to quantify and measure. The standard format of all communications requires measurements and quantification with every message. The operational planning process is all about quantifying and measuring to size up the opportunity you are proposing be funded.

Rules of Thumb

Start with S.M.A.R.T. goals
- SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. At Amazon, everyone has S.M.A.R.T. goals. You live and breathe them. They allow you to speak to where you stand against plan.
- For Example: Increase Customer Engagement from 20MM in 2018 to 40MM in 2019, achieve a YoY increase of 100% by introducing ABC feature, launch XYZ widget by 12/31/2019. (How to Write Smart Goals)
Use adjectives and adverbs sparingly

Adjectives (“What kind?”, “Which?”, “How many?”) and adverbs (“how,” “when,” “where,” and “how much”) are typically considered filler words. You need to be more specific. Consider putting numbers where you might otherwise use adjectives or adverbs.
For example: “The program greatly improved customer engagement” doesn’t fly, because it doesn’t give quantifiable information. A better way to phrase it might read, “The program improved customer engagement by 20 percent, a YoY increase to 120MM from 100MM.” (Learn more about low calorie words to avoid.)