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Assumption Testing Techniques
How Do You Know If You Are Building The Right Thing?
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How Do You Know If You Are Building The Right Thing?


The primary goal of a product team is building the right thing. This compilation is a list of techniques that can be used to rapidly test assumptions at various stages in the product delivery cycle to increase the probability of having an impact with that product/feature.
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Assumption Testing Techniques
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Pre-mortem
Once you have decided to pursue an initiative and are trying to figure out what it needs to be successful.
Pretend like this is a post-mortem. Identify all the things that could potentially go wrong (this is a great way to channel the nay-sayers). Prioritize them in rank order of risk and use the other techniques to de-risk those items.
"Fake" press release
When you have identified the key benefits and features of your proposed solution to the problem.
An Amazon technique. Write the press release of your feature/product before even completely writing the spec for it. See if this press release is interesting to your internal and external audience. Helps us focus on the outcome not the output.
Customer letter
Early validation of features/benefits of the proposed solution
A pretend letter from a happy user of the product/feature to the CEO. This letter will actually be written by the product manager. The customer explains why she is so happy and grateful for the new product feature. She describes how it changed or improved her life. Customer-centric version of the fake press release technique
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