Small teams and tight meetings [are] targeted to solve one or two problems, with challenges cut down to bite-size chunks. Where other retailers might ponder how to improve customer checkout, Amazon shaves layers off the concept and assigns them. One team might work on streamlining gift certificate redemption, another on credit card authorization. All projects take this approach at Amazon.

Vogels upholds the Amazonian principle of "two-pizza teams." That is, technology teams working on a given project typically can be fed by no more than two pizzas—usually eight or fewer people. Small teams are fast, he says, and don't get bogged down in so-called administrivia. 

Each group assigned to a particular business is completely responsible for it. Team members aren't considered database administrators or Java programmers or some other techie title. They're the people responsible for the customer checkout procedure or credit card verification process or search function.

The team scopes the fix, designs it, builds it, implements it and monitors its ongoing use. This way, technology programmers and architects get direct feedback from the business people who use their code or applications--in regular meetings and informal conversations.