Initial Alignment

Purpose

Starting out, there’s a lot more that we don’t know than that we know. Getting our assumptions out on the table together will make sure we are aligned on what’s missing and what we need for the work ahead.

Exercise 1: Create an Assumptions Board

Estimated time needed: 60 minutes

Materials: Real sticky notes, virtual sticky notes (e.g. using Miro or Figjam), or spreadsheet software – whichever your team prefers

The structure of this exercise should follow the one detailed over at design.thoughtbot.com:

🔗 Assumptions Board

However, in our case, there are some key differences:

First, we will be filling our board with assumptions about our customer, their pain points, the market overall, and our value proposition in that market (as opposed to assumptions about our software or user).

Second, we'll want to score each of our assumptions on the riskiness of the assumption to our business and confidence level in the assumption. In the latter case, make sure to give things you have high confidence in a LOWER score. The combined risk and confidence score here will direct us to those assumptions that we need to test first – the ones that pose the biggest risk to our business that we know the least about.

The final major difference in a Customer Discovery Assumptions Board is that we'll be returning to it constantly as we derisk previous assumptions and add new ones. This board will be a central organizing force of our work.

Exercise 2: Visualize the Customer’s Critical Path

Estimated time needed: 60 minutes

Materials: Real sticky notes or virtual sticky notes (e.g. using Miro or Figjam)

The structure of this exercise should follow the one detailed over at design.thoughtbot.com:

🔗 Critical Path

However, in our case, we want to storyboard what we assume to be our customer’s and user’s critical paths as we currently imagine them – knowing full well that we are likely wrong about a lot of it.

Be as expansive here as possible. Ask the group:

• What are people doing right before experiencing the pain point? Where are they? Who and what is physically around them? What other tools or software are they using?
• What are people doing to solve the pain point currently? Chances are, it involves a combination of email and spreadsheets 😂 But keep in mind that it could be “nothing” or “hiring someone to do this manually”, etc.
• What do people do right after experiencing the pain point? Where are they? Who and what is physically around them? What other tools or software will they be using next?

Do this with actual drawings whenever possible! Misalignments emerge when we can’t use words to describe what we mean, and resolving misalignments now will save you a lot of pain (and time) later.

Many new assumptions will emerge during this exercise – be sure to add them to the Assumptions Board when they come up!