working-backwards

name

working-backwards

description

Working Backwards 5-stage customer-first product discovery. Orchestrates Listen, Define, Invent, Refine, Test & Iterate to produce a 5CQ, PR/FAQ, or Dear Customer Letter. Use when the user asks to work backwards, write a PR/FAQ, draft 5 customer questions, do customer-first product definition, or mentions Working Backwards, press release FAQ, 5CQ, MLP, or customer obsession. Do NOT use for strategy kernel, Rumelt diagnosis, or Wardley mapping — use product-strategy. Do NOT use for PRD drafting or HMW/EARS specs — use product-discovery.

Contents

File	Path	When to load
Canonical WB reference	${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/product-design-shared/references/working-backwards.md	5-stage process, artifacts, principles, common pitfalls
Pyramid composition	${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/product-design-shared/references/pyramid-principle.md	PR as Pyramid top, FAQ as antagonist test
Research design	${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/product-design-shared/references/research-design.md	Listen-stage hypothesis + MECE sub-questions
PR/FAQ authoring workflow	references/prfaq-authoring.md	Drafting workflow: 5CQ → PR → FAQ → visuals
Customer-insights role	references/roles/customer-insights.md	Researcher-agent role for Listen synthesis
5CQ worksheet	templates/5cq-worksheet.md	Fill-in-the-blank for the 5 Customer Questions

Working Backwards

Orchestrate the 5-stage Working Backwards process end-to-end to produce a 5CQ, PR/FAQ, or Dear Customer Letter. This skill is the user-facing runner; the canonical discipline lives in the shared reference at ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/product-design-shared/references/working-backwards.md.

When to Use

• You have a product idea and need to pressure-test it customer-first before building.
• You need to produce a PR/FAQ for an annual planning cycle or leadership review.
• You need a 5CQ to align a small team on a feature idea without the full PR/FAQ overhead.
• The real customer problem is fuzzy and you want the discipline to force clarity.

When NOT to use:

• The customer problem is already well-framed and you just need an engineering PRD → use skills/product-discovery/ directly.
• You need a strategic argument (Rumelt kernel, Wardley map) → use skills/product-strategy/ directly.

Core Concepts

The 5 stages

Load the canonical shared reference for full per-stage detail: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/product-design-shared/references/working-backwards.md. Summary:

Stage	Key question	Primary artifact	Upstream / downstream
1. Listen	Who is the customer and what insights do we have?	Raw insights + customer data	skills/customer-research/ + customer-insights role
2. Define	What is the prevailing customer problem / opportunity?	Problem statement (data-backed, no solution named)	skills/customer-research/templates/problem-statement.md
3. Invent	What is the solution? Why is it the right one vs. alternatives?	1-2 sentence solution + rejected alternatives	Brainstorm multiple directions; evaluate
4. Refine	End-to-end CX? Most important customer benefit?	PR/FAQ draft + storyboard + MLP	references/prfaq-authoring.md
5. Test & Iterate	How do we measure success? Unintended impacts?	Success metrics + experiment plan	Launch is the starting line

The process is circular, not linear. What you learn in Stage 5 feeds Stage 1.

Artifact progression

The three WB artifacts stack from lightest to heaviest:

1. 5 Customer Questions (5CQ) — templates/5cq-worksheet.md. The on-ramp. Useful on its own for smaller work.
2. PR/FAQ — the Press Release (≤1 page) + FAQs + Visuals (combined ≤6 pages). Workflow at references/prfaq-authoring.md covers the structural skeleton (headline, sub-headline, summary paragraph, problem, solution, customer quote, getting-started, leader quote, then internal/external FAQs).
3. Dear Customer Letter — alternative to the PR in 2nd-person letter form. Five-paragraph template.

Pyramid connection

Working Backwards maps cleanly onto the Pyramid Principle:

• 5CQ is a mini-Pyramid. Q1–Q4 are the base (evidence: who, what, most important benefit, how we know). Q5 is the customer-facing answer (the experience).
• PR is the Pyramid top-down: headline (Purpose) → body (arguments) → customer quotes + specifics (evidence).
• FAQ is the antagonist test from Pyramid Phase 2 externalized — pre-writing responses to the 10 hardest questions a skeptic could ask.

See ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/product-design-shared/references/pyramid-principle.md for the composition discipline.

Quick Reference

A typical end-to-end run:

1. Capture intent. What is the idea? Who is the primary customer segment?
2. Listen. Delegate to skills/customer-research/ or use the customer-insights role directly. Gather raw insights; return Pyramid-base-shaped findings (per research-design.md).
3. Define. Write the problem statement using skills/customer-research/templates/problem-statement.md. Pressure-test with the antagonist lens.
4. Invent. Generate 4-6 distinct directions with tradeoffs. Do not fall in love early. Use skills/agent-ux-patterns/ if this is an agent-UX problem.
5. Refine. Draft the 5CQ (templates/5cq-worksheet.md). Build a storyboard for the customer experience. Draft the PR/FAQ following references/prfaq-authoring.md.
6. Test & Iterate. Define success metrics. Plan the experiment. Launch. Feed learnings back to Stage 1.

Composition with other skills

Role	Skill	What it does
Upstream (Listen + Define)	skills/customer-research/	Research-design method → Pyramid-base-shaped findings
Downstream (engineering)	skills/product-discovery/	Translate a defined idea into engineering requirements
Strategic framing	skills/product-strategy/	Rumelt kernel, Wardley map, Minto-shaped argument
The methodology reference	skills/product-design-shared/	Canonical WB + Pyramid + research-design content

Anti-Patterns

• Skipping Listen. Jumping to Invent because it's more fun. Produces well-executed wrong solutions.
• Naming the solution in the problem statement. "Customers need an AI dashboard" pre-commits the answer.
• Writing a polished PR without the thinking. LLMs make polish easy. Polish without clarity is a faster path to the wrong build.
• Executive summary at the top of a PR/FAQ. Inverts customer focus. If exec summary carries weight, wrong document type.
• Treating launch as the finish line. Stage 5 loops back to Stage 1.

References

• references/prfaq-authoring.md — step-by-step drafting workflow (5CQ → PR → FAQ → Visuals)
• references/roles/customer-insights.md — researcher-agent role for Listen-stage synthesis

Why the work is worth it

"Done correctly, the Working Backwards process is a huge amount of work. But, it saves you even more work later. It's not designed to be easy — it's designed to save huge amounts of work on the backend, and to make sure we're actually building the right thing."