You have 2 free member-only stories left this month. Sign up for Medium and get an extra one @ Jesse Freeman (Fallow) Jul17,2020 - 16minread * - O Listen [i Save The Anatomy of an Amazon 6-pager A deep dive into writing detailed planning docs from one of the most successful companies in the world Image by CurtisM media from Pixabay The Amazon 6-pager I worked at Amazon for five years, leaving days before receiving the coveted yellow badge. Most people don’t make it past the first year. It’s an intense work environment, and the company rinciples that provide a strict framework for how you revolves around specific leadershi@ Openinapp ( Perhaps the most challenging part of working at Amazon comes down (o being able (0 write a 6- pager. While there are several types of documents you may need to write at Amazon, such as the backward press-release or the 2-pager, your ability to write a 6-pager will directly impact your status at the table and your ability to move up in the company. If you struggle to write detailed plans for your business, this may be a useful structure to emulate. My plan here is to walk you through the anatomy of an Amazon-style 6-page document in granular detail. I was surprised to see that the few articles out there on the process mostly get it wrong. Even stranger, there doesn’t appear to be a single real example of a 6-pager outside of Amazon. So, I’ve decided to create one from scratch and share it with you. I based it on a structure I used when I headed up Framework Partner Marketing for the Amazon Appstore. Each group in Amazon has its way of writing 6-pagers. While they may look or read a bit differently, they all share the same structure. Also, there are different approaches based on the goal of the document. The example I am going to share is from what we call an operational plan document. These are 6-month plans that outline the current state of the business, the historical data from the last period, the goals for this period, and how you plan on achieving them. There are two of these documents that cover the year called OP-1 and OP-2. Right about now, Amazon. teams would be executing their 2020 OP-2 plan and beginning to draft the 2021 OP-1 plan. It’s rare to write a large plan like this on your own. We usually work as a team to contribute to a single OP doc. One owner is responsible for cleaning it up and making it sounds like it came from an individual author. The heads of each team will have a plan for their group, and highlights from there will roll up into a master OP document used by the entire organization. I've had to write several tactical plans myself in various groups at Amazon, and it’s an incredibly time- consuming process that usually involves dozens of revisions. It feels like writing a master’s thesis, and a lot of care goes into making sure it is ready before presenting to a group of superiors. How Amazon conducts meetings Amazon is well known for its lack of using PowerPoint. The way this works is that before a meeting, you print out enough copies for everyone in the room. You're not allowed to read the document from your computer unless you are remote. Also, no one reads the document before the meeting. You are usually given 20-25 minutes at the beginning of a 60-minute meeting to read the doc from beginning to end. Most people write down questions or feedback directly on the printout since using a computer during this time is frowned upon.Open inapp ( Image by websubs from Pixabay All print outs are handed back to you at the end of the meeting. The rest of the time consists of everyone in the room challenging your position, questioning your tactics, and digging through the data to make sure it is valid. It’s incredibly stressful, and when the meeting is over, it’s your responsibility to update and recirculate the document to everyone as a final version. There is no ideation or brainstorming during these kinds of meetings. You need to go into them with everything prepared ahead of time, which usually means you've had multiple people review it to ensure that you are ready. The last thing you should know, which is perhaps the most critical part of the entire process, is that your 6-pager needs to stand on its own. One of the things I admired most at Amazon was their ability to transfer knowledge between different groups. Any time ] interacted with a new group, I could ask to see their OP doc and get caught up on everything I needed to know. For this process to work, it means you need to write your 6-pager in a way that allows anyone, even people not familiar with the subject, to know what is going on without additional research. I'll get into some of the ways you can do that later. Since this may be your first time reading an Amazon-style 6-pager, the last bit of context I'll give vou is that I wrote this for a game development tool I have been building in mv spare time called@ Openinapp ( focusing my activities over the next six months. Writing a plan like this is one of the most powerful ways you can organize your thoughts to share with others. After you finish reading the 6-pager, I'll break apart each section and explain them in more detail. Don’t get too hung up on the actual contents if you're not familiar with game development, marketing, or reading dense plans. I also won't accept any feedback on this one, so there is no need to print it out and hand it back to me. So, with that out of the way, take the next 20-25 minutes to read my 2020 OP-2 plan for Pixel Vision 8. Structuring a 6-pager narrative How did that go, intense, right? I remember the first time I had to read one. It looked like a complete wall of text. lam going to assume you didn’t get through the entire thing so I'll include some excerpts as we go. To give you perspective, that took me five days to write, and I did four revisions. Since no one else had to review it, I'd say the process was almost tolerable. | love to write, but even these are a challenge for me. While it may feel completely alien to you, I miss this detail and clarity these types of documents provide now that I no longer work at Amazon. And while 6-pagers are a chore to write, I can no longer sit through a PowerPoint presentation without questioning why it wasn’t put into a document for me to read through. The first thing you probably noticed is that my 6-pager is using 10 point font. These things are dense, and there is a strict rule around it being exactly six pages. The goal is to fill up all six pages without any filler. The other thing you may have noticed is that the document isn’t six pages, it’s much longer. The perceived length of a 6-pager is a bit of a misconception. I've written 6-pagers that were over 40 pages long. The reason for this is because of the appendix. The main goal of authoring this kind of document is to craft the entire thing as a narrative. That doesn’t mean it needs to be an entertaining story. It merely means there are no bulet-point lists, no graphics, and no fluff in the document's core 6-pages. Since it’s difficult to sum up the contextual information like data, graphs, or examples in narrative form, you can add it to the end of the document in an appendix. This allows the reader to choose what to look up for additional information as needed. It also allows you to store bulky, complex data visualizations without breaking up the narrative’s flow.Open inapp ( + Introduction — This needs to set up precisely what the material is going (0 cover and to inherently state the general direction of where the document plans on going. * Goals— List right up front what the metrics for success are so we can use them as a lens to see the remaining document through. * Tenets — This is a very Amazon thing where every action has some clearly define north star. There are a lot of ways to word thes Generally, they are inspirational pillars that the rest of the plan sits on top of (go with me on this one). State of the business — This section is another important one. You need to inform the reader of the current state of the business. There needs to be a lot of detail here, which sets up the points to compare against in the next section. « Lessons learned — Amazon is big on data. This section will outline the current state of the business and its influence over creating the goals you need to achieve. It should be a detailed enough snapshot to give the reader all of the data they need to understand the positive and negatives activities in the prior period. + Strategic priorities — This is the meat of the document and lays out the plan, how to execute it, and should match up to achieving the goals stated at the top of the document. Of course, each of these sections has a specific job in building the narrative of the 6-pager. To pull it all together requires a certain amount of finesse. Luckily, I've made it through meetings needing to make only minor changes, and I’ve been in meetings where someone’s entire document is ripped apart line by line. I don’t profess to have the experience to say mine were better than others, but I did have a few good mentors. So here is how I decided to write my sample 6-pager. The introduction usually try to consolidate my introduction to two paragraphs. Since this 6-pager was probably the first you've ever read on a topic you probably have no background on, I indulged and added the 3rd paragraph to pack in some extra detail.@o Openinapp (Get startex 1)_Introduction This document aims to outline the current state of Pixel Vision 8's business and share our strategic priorities for 2020. Our mission is to work with developers interested in creating retro-looking 8-bit games by connecting with them from the moment they get their first idea through completing a project. PV8 lives in a subset of the game development tool space known as Fantasy Consoles (see appendix 7.1). These Fantasy Consoles are small, self-contained, dedicated game development environments with builtin tools reminiscent of old 8-bit consoles or computers. While we continue to execute via our website, itch.io, Twitter, and Discord (see ‘appendix 7.2), we stil need to amplify our message to reach other developers interested in using a Fantasy Console, Early on, PV8 gained attention from developers as an alternative to existing Fantasy Consoles due to a few key distinguishers. These Include the ability to customize project limitations, a rich graphics UI (user interface), and the project is open source. Most of the competing Fantasy Consoles use some form of command-line interface for working with the underlying file system and tools. These Fantasy Consoles emulate early DOS and Commodore 64 style operating systems from the late 70s. We purposely modeled PV around 2 more user-friendly operating system akin to the first Macintosh computers of the mid-80s to increase adoption among. millennials. Given the recent crowding of this space, we need to reduce the time it takes to get started, unblock technical hurdles, and offer a clear path to export stand-alone Windows, Mac, and Linux games from PV8 to distinguish ourselves from the competition. By removing developer friction, we hope to increase organic adoption and, in turn, attract developers that produce higher quality games. Our focus in 2020 will help establish PVB as the number one Fantasy Console developers want to use, ensuring a healthy pipeline of completed games as we head into 2021. Figure 1. The introduction section from my sample 6-pager T'm not going to spend a lot of time on this section; it should be self-explanatory. I wanted to point out the two references to the appendix right off the bat. There is a lot of data to process upfront, especially if you're not familiar with the subject. So you will want to add as much contextual data as possible in the document itself. You'll notice there are no links in the documents to any websites either. The expectation is that you are reading a printout. So, if you need an offline copy of the entire internet for reference, put it all in the appendix. The goals Next up are the goals. The goal section is one of the only two areas of the document where bullet points are allowed. I follow a predefined structure for writing these, and I’ve seen it consistently used across several other groups. 2) Goals 1n 2020, we plan to focus on and achieve the follow, ©) 27%K © Q) 2t Reduce the tatal number of active Github issues from 100 on 12/31/2019 to 25 by 12/31/2020, a decrease of 75% Yor. Increase active users: Grow the active developer community from 7.4k on 12/31/2019 to 20k by 12/31/2020, an increase of 63% YoY. © Increase game releases: Create additional tutorials, documentation, and code examples that enable developers to create new games from 5 on 12/31/2019 to 20 by 12/31/2020, +75% YoY. Figure 2, The goals section from my sample 6-pager@o Openinapp ( goals end up with a positive outcome; I made my first one a negative one (o show off wo different types of results. But you want to have at least three goals which appear to be the magic number considering you will probably have multiple other priorities throughout the year from. other groups since these plans do not exist in a vacuum. I’ve seen all kinds of ways of writing goals at companies I’ve worked at, and this is honestly the only format that has ever made sense to me. It feels like OKRs are another popular one but I find it very difficult to adjust to them after spending years at Amazon. The tenets After the goals, you declare the tenets. I’ve never seen another company so cultish in the way it requires employees to think according to a framework of rules. On the first day of orientation, they walk you through the leadership principles, and this way of thinking helps reinforce the documents you write. 3)_Tenets, The following tenets are guiding principles we use to evaluate and prioritize Pixel Vision 8 activities: © Quality over quantity: We will not rush out updates on a set schedule. Instead, we will work towards more significant releases that fx multiple bugs and improve the overall stability ofthe tooling. © Keep scale in mind: While we'd lke to develop individual relationships with each user, we should focus on features and marketing programs that address the top ofthe funnel to increase developer adoption at scale ‘© Reduce developer friction: We want to focus on educating developers through in-depth technical content and tool ‘documentation instead of relying solely on community knowledge transfer. © Game first approach: Developers should have a clear publishing path, and our tools need to assist in making this process as ‘easy and intuitive as possible. Play with developers who play with us: We will prioritize relationships with developers who are more willing to support PV8 and collaborate. To have long-term success, we believe mutual interests wil be the most sustainable. © Organic trumps paid: Although some kind of paid promotions will be critical for building and accelerating adoption, we want to focus on driving organic demand through community building and not on paid user acquisition. Figure 3. The tenets from my sample 6-pager Irarely put much effort into these. While the leadership principles become rules for how you engage with your co-workers, these tenets add nothing to the document. The people that write excellent tenets can link them back to the leadership principles somehow. Since one of the principles I liked the most is “disagree and commit,” I kept my opinion to myself and always added tenets to my 6-pagers since the decision to use them happened long before I got there. Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.@o Openinapp ( After the tenets, things get serious fast. The document begins with che state of che business. For this example, 6-pager, I decided to make it a single page. I would hardly call my hobby game engine a “business,” but I did my best to take it seriously. 44)_State of the Business Pixel Vision 8 has three primary verticals that contribute to the business: the framework, Pixel Vision OS, and technical content. The framework represents the open-source Ci codebase that runs the Fantasy Console itself on Windows, Mac, and Linux. This ‘open-source project lives on GitHub and Is licensed under the Microsoft Public License (see appendix 7.3). Also, PV8 uses a customized version of MonoGame, a popular open-source game engine under the same license. Pixel Vision OS consists of a custom-built operating system written in Lua and runs on top of the framework as a stand-alone application. The OS includes all of the tools that developers use to make games as well as a way to manage project files and export finished games. Finally, the technical content includes all of the documentation, tutorials, and code examples that not only help on board developers, but also generate the primary source of income to support the project. In 2019, 66% of our total income came from itch.io, with the remaining 34% generated from the main website through direct sales. These two revenue sources accounted for $3.7k in gross revenue, thanks to the addition of 786 new paying customers (see appendix 7.4). While this covered operational costs (see appendix 7,5), it stunted the ability to scale up development verses the time put into supporting and building new features (see appendix 7.6). This data also points to a failure with the subscription business model since ‘customers favored one time purchases instead of smaller monthly payments. Over time, the lack of subscriptions will impact the recurring revenue potential in 2020. In order to offset the lack of subscriptions, we will instead focus on ways to Increase direct sales through complementary content such as tutorials and art packs to make the core product free to grow the user base. Finally, we look to expand alternative income opportunities such as itch.io's "pay what you want” feature and Github sponsorships to make the base product free. Figure 5, Setting up the introduction for the state of the business section in my sample 6-pager Appendix references litter this section. In a real 6-pager, I would have cut out the first paragraph and jumped right into the numbers. This section is really about distilling all of the current activities and their intended goals. However, this is not a section to talk in the past tense. The state of the business should be a current snapshot of the data. Because of this, I usually keep all of the figures blank until right before the meeting. This way, my document is always as up to date as possible. I still look at this section through the lens of the Appstore, where I was in charge of tracking the game engines that supported Fire OS, the game submission numbers, and my budget. I had to report weekly on the business’s health, so it was natural to have these numbers ready at a moment's notice. Had this been a real 6-pager, I would have included a full snapshot of this data, which could go on for pages, in the appendix. Amazon is big on data; those are real facts. You are building a narrative around those facts so that we are not just skimming an excel spreadsheet. The last thing I want to call out in this section was how I ended it. It’s a subtle detail, but I make sure to complete the section with a little summary of everything that has been done and try to tie itinto the goals. Since my goals were core to the way I ran my business, they didn’t change much every six months. The only thing that change was the target numbers. This made it easier to keep@o Openinapp ( After summing up the state of the business, it’s time co reflect on what happened in che past. This is a snapshot from the last period until now and has to be even more factual with numbers, percentages of goal completion, and even additional references in the appendix. 5)_ 2039 Lessons Learned 2019 was a successful year for increasing paid and non-paying customers, product stability, and reducing dependence on direct one fon one customer support. As of December 31, 2019, we had a total of 7.4k customers. Our unique feature set helped contribute to this growth. Working with a well-known pixel artist, Christina Antoinette Neofotistou (@castpixel), also helped build additional awareness and credibility in the indie game developer community. (One challenge we faced last year was cultivating more developers to create games. Although there has been a great deal of interest ‘on Twitter, very few games have been created by the community in 2019. As a result, developers are not widely using Pixel Vision 8, ‘which continued to be a problem in activating the community last year. To achieve the 2019 goal of adding 1k new users by EOY, we decided to focus more on features, and the type of content developers asked for, instead of directly pursuing customer acquisition. Since there were substantial changes between releases in 2019, this required significant rewrites and editing, which proved to be time-consuming, Figure 6, Setting up the introduction for the lessons learned section in my sample 6-pager This section is similar to the state of the business but with one exception; the tense here is always in the past. There shouldn’t be any forward projections or expectations. There is zero room for interpretation. The data will tell the real story. Part of working at Amazon is that you are encouraged to share your failures along with your successes. I've worked in many places where people try to hide what didn’t work. You can usually tell because they never have data to back up their claims. At Amazon, the culture understands that you will fail; in fact, there is a leadership principle called “deliver results ” to address that reality. Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and ina timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle. Notice the “despite setbacks” part? That is very important because real leaders fail from time to time but learn from their mistakes. Those failures help inform the new set of goals and give you clarity as to why it failed, so you don’t repeat your mistake. That’s outlined in the “ownership” and “are right, a lot” leadership principles too but you can look those up on your own. Strategic priorities Atthis point, you should have a real clear picture of what is going on, what has happened leading up to this, and what we hope to achieve moving forward. It’s now time for the most detailed section of all, the strategic priorities.Open in app ( In 2020, our priorities are to reduce developer friction, improve stability, and encourage high-quality games to be created with Pixel Vision 8. To do this, we will work to enhance technical content, discoverability in the broader Fantasy Console community, and explore new marketing opportunities in a crowded space. However, we stil control our destiny, and as such, we will leverage our channels to improve awareness around building games with PV8. Where we are unable to reduce friction or increase growth organically, we will work to achieve the following strategic priorities: 5) Strategic Priorities 6.1) Focus on incre: 1g stability of the product by closing 50+ open issues, -75% YoY. Finish Pixel Vision OS tools: Currently, the Pixel Vision OS tools are in varying states of completion. Each one needs to be audited, overhauled, and templatized, so consistency exists across the board. That requires the standardization of a copy/paste and undo/redo system, easier to use Ul components and a formal workflow for converting designs into actual working tools. Not only is this critical for our developers to have the best tools possible, but it also sets us up for success. As we head into 2021, we will begin +o look into creating new tools to handle more advanced tasks like building meta-sprites and animations and sharing games online via the website's backend, Figure 7. The beginning of my strategic priorities from my sample 6-pager ‘There is a lot to unpack here, mostly because this is usually 50-70% of the 6-pager. This section outlines each activity you plan on doing and how it relates to one of the goals. I don’t believe the order makes a difference, you can structure the narrative how you like, but people in the meeting will calculate up each activity to make sure it matches up to the goal’s projected data point. This is also the section that is open for interpretation and will be the one you spend the majority of the meeting defending. Up until this point, everything you have written has been facts, except for the tenets. The only questions you will get on those sections are whether the data adds up or they perceive the goals as not challenging enough. The strategic priorities section is all speculation. And at Amazon, they don’t accept anecdotes for an answer. That is why to write this section, you need to pull numbers from the lessons learned and state of the business that help prove your proposed activities will work. Til admit, I didn’t fully back my assumptions up with data from the previous sections. Honestly, since I don’t have to report this to anyone, I don’t analyze my game engine data all that much. I just do it for fun. But what I did want you to learn from this section was how to structure these priorities. You'll see they follow a particular pattern. Astrategic priority consists of two parts. The first part is a prediction. Think of this as your thesis on how you will contribute back to a given goal. The second part, however, is where you attempt laying out the actual plan to achieve it. These can get very detailed, and a lot of the plans I’ve put together use these to summarize the approach and the appendix for tactical execution steps. I’ve placed entire content plans in the appendix since they didn’t contribute to the narrative, but people will want to see the details.@o Openinapp ( reference goes right into the details. And since the meeting comprises of team leads from ocher groups, each one will have specific areas of interest to dig into and skim over parts that don't pertain to them. Since everyone at the table needs to understand the entire scope, they chose to follow an appendix reference for more information as needed. Bither way, they still walk away with an overall sense of that part of the plan. It’s incredibly brilliant, and probably the one structural detail most plans I read at other companies don’t do very well. Ending a6-pager Congratulations on making it this far. Luckily, we are almost at the end. Let’s take a look at the last strategic priority in my 6-pager. Showcase the best content from current users: We will focus on promoting top content created with PV8 to help drive awareness of the opportunity the platform presents to developers. In addition to merely offering help to developers making games, we should strive to highlight developers on our platform based on the complexity of the game they choose to build. Our first task will be to source developers working on games that are currently active in the Discord WIP (work in progress) channel. The second task is to find and entice top unmanaged tail developers to port their games to PV8 for additional marketing exposure via all of our marketing channels. This initiative also supports our commitment to offering developers incentives our competition cannot match. We will provide these developers a more curated marketing opportunity such as features on the website, interviews/case studies, and game promotion in each of our weekly updates. The goal is to show influential developers that partnering with PV8 is more than just picking our Fantasy Console over another, but that we are here to support and encourage their creations actively The best way for us to succeed is by identifying lighthouse games, which we can use to attract other developers to the platform. These types of games will be the focal point of what we will promote on the website. To better promote each lighthouse game, we will do case studies, technical blog posts, and prominently highlight them on our social media channels. Our goal with supporting. these developers is also to get exclusive access to their feedback on using the tools, securing the game itself on our platform, and remove any barriers the developers may have when building with PV8. Finally, though these partnerships, the most valuable feedback we get can be used to improve Pixel Vision 8 in 2020 as we prepare to head into 2021. Figure 8, Excerpt of the last strategic priority from my sample 6-pager There are two things you should notice. First, wrote right up to the bottom of page 6 to stick the landing. Second, you'll see there is no summary section or closing remarks. That would be fluff. I've never read a 6-pager that summed everything up. They may exist, but out of the hundreds I’ve read, I never felt like a summary was missing. I got a clear picture of the past, present, and future activities and what better way to end then on an actionable item. always make sure that the last sentence ends on a positive, forward-facing note. One that doesn’t sum everything up but at least feels like a natural ending to the document. Also, I didn’t add many appendix items to this example strategic priority section. That was on purpose; it would be more work than this example warranted. Regardless, you should now have a clear sense of how this section is supposed to be structured.@ Open in app ‘The leadership principles give you a sort of rules of engagement on how to be direct with a co- worker and walk away civil. While I don’t fully drink the kool-aid, it’s impossible to survive at Amazon without weaponizing these principles in your meetings. Sometimes it’s to attack and others times to defend, but most of all, you want to always “dive deep.” Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them. Thanks tolessica Jungton Sign up for Write Together By The Writing Cooperative Monthly check-in with news and tips for writers of all genres. Take alook. (C cxrnareeer) Cer eee