Product hypothesis

Goal

The entire team must agree on the product features, benefits and release schedules.

Checklist

• What problem are you solving?
• Create a one page feature lists: What are the technical attributes of the product?
  • What is the general goal of the product?
  • Provide a simplified architecture diagram
  • Provide a feature lists
• Will these features be well understood or do the require explanation?
• Benefit list: What do the features let a customer do?
  • Something new?
  • Better?
  • More?
  • Faster?
  • Cheaper?
  • Undertneath each of the features above give a three line summary of its benefits.
  • See also: Innovation Radar
• Will these benefits be accepted as such or do the need explanation?
  • Describe release 1
  • Describe release 2
  • Describe release 3
  • All the way out as you can see
• What Intellectual Property will be unique?
  • What can you patent?
  • What is a trade secret and you need to protect?
  • What will you have to license?
  • Have you checked if you infringe on others IP?
• What is the total cost of ownership of your product?
  • Training?
  • Deployment?
  • Additional technical infrastructure?
  • Additional personnel infrastructure?
• Dependency analysis: what are you depending on before the product can come to volume?
  • Work-flow / Lifestyle changes on the part of the customer?
  • Other products required?
  • Economic conditions?
  • Behavior changes?
  • Supply chain modifications?
  • Laws to change?
  • Other infrastructure / products / change in behavior?
  • If so, what?
  • When will it happen?
  • What happens to your company if it doesn't?
  • What metrics should be in use to measure the change?

Exit deliverables

• Product specification
• Feature list
• Benefit list
• Release description
• Dependency analysis

Part of: Customer Development Checklist - Customer Discovery Part of book: The Four Steps to the Epiphany