Building your own confidence scale

How much discovery is enough?
That's a tricky question to answer, because as always "it depends"...
Let's start at the beginning.
PRODUCT AS AN INVESTMENT IN TECH
Product teams are expensive (~£1m a year)
That's an investment in technology from the CEO
She wants a return on that investment
PMs are primarily responsible for making sure the CEO gets that return
DISCOVERY AS THE ACT OF REDUCING RISK
Discovery reduces the risk of not making a return
There are four main risks (value, usability, tech, business)
Discovery is expensive, so faster is better
BASIC EQUATION TO SOLVE:
Confidence in what you're building exceeds risk in what you're building
DRIVERS OF RISK:
Effort to build. i.e. engineering cost
Downside scenario. i.e. what happens if we're wrong
Company maturity. i.e. revenue at risk
Opportunity cost. i.e. what else we could build
HIERARCHY OF CONFIDENCE:
Intuition. i.e. you thinking on your own
Planning. i.e. you thinking with your team
Anecdotal. i.e. speaking with a few customers
Research. i.e. lots of customer interviews, surveys, references
Data. i.e. AB testing, closed betas, fake door tests
If you've got more risk, you need to go higher up the hierarchy of confidence.
In this video we run through how to build your own hierarchy of confidence, how to calibrate it, and how to use it once you've made it. ​This is a very practical, nuts and bolts stuff.
LINKS:
Slides: docs.google.co...
How much discovery is enough: www.hustlebadg...
6 week discovery course: www.hustlebadg...
Miro board: miro.com/app/b...
Related topics:
Design thinking: www.hustlebadg...
Continuous discovery habits: www.hustlebadg...
Speaking to users: www.hustlebadg...
Jobs to be done: www.hustlebadg...
Customer journey mapping: www.hustlebadg...