How can you validate and test high-risk products? (2024)

Before you start building or testing anything, you need to clearly define your assumptions about your product, your customers, your market, and your business model. These are the hypotheses that you need to validate or invalidate with evidence. You can use tools like the Lean Canvas, the Value Proposition Canvas, or the Business Model Canvas to help you articulate your assumptions and identify the most critical ones.

Not all assumptions are equally risky. Some are more likely to be true or false, and some have more impact on your product's success or failure. You need to prioritize your risks based on their importance and uncertainty, and focus on testing the ones that are both high-impact and high-uncertainty. You can use tools like the Riskiest Assumption Test (RAT) or the Assumption Mapping to help you prioritize your risks and plan your experiments.

Once you have identified and prioritized your risks, you need to design your experiments to test them. An experiment is a method of collecting data and feedback from your customers or potential customers to validate or invalidate your assumptions. You can use various types of experiments, such as interviews, surveys, landing pages, prototypes, MVPs, or pilots, depending on your stage of development, your resources, and your goals. You can use tools like the Experiment Canvas or the Test Card to help you design your experiments and define your metrics and criteria.

After you have designed your experiments, you need to run them and collect the data and feedback. You need to make sure that you run your experiments in a reliable, ethical, and rigorous way, and that you reach enough customers or potential customers to get valid results. You also need to be aware of the potential biases and pitfalls that can affect your experiments, such as confirmation bias, false positives, false negatives, or vanity metrics. You can use tools like the Experiment Report or the Learning Card to help you document and analyze your experiments and results.

The final step of validating and testing high-risk products is to learn from your experiments and iterate on your product, your assumptions, or your experiments. You need to compare your results with your metrics and criteria, and draw conclusions about whether your assumptions are validated or invalidated, and whether your product is viable, desirable, or feasible. You also need to decide what to do next based on your learnings, such as pivot, persevere, or kill your product idea, or run new or different experiments. You can use tools like the Pivot or Persevere Canvas or the Validation Board to help you learn and iterate.

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

Product Development

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