For Project Teams
Don’t make an ass of you and me…
(ie. don’t assume)
Often project teams get X months to build a thing, and what most people seem to focus on is completing building the thing, not whether the thing should be built at all.
If it fails to deliver on outcomes, or a blocker pops out that derails the project, it wastes your resources, causes embarrassment and can harm your career.
Identifying and testing critical assumptions early de-risks your project and identifies blockers early, so that you can pivot as required before being too committed and accelerate towards outcomes over outputs.
Here’s how it works.
Step 1
The first step is to identify all of the assumptions that underpin your deliverable, be it a product, service, process or even a new business.
For example, if you are developing a new training solution - before you build the entire program you better test the assumption that your customers will actually show up and pay you enough money to be viable.
Do this with your key stakeholders. It helps.
Step 2
With your long list of assumptions created, it’s time to map them. These should be plotted on a matrix, with ‘Known vs. Unknown’ on the x-axis, and ‘Critical vs. Not Critical’ on the y-axis.
The will help you focus on the assumptions that are critical to the success of your project, of which you know very little about or have a very low level of confidence.
Step 3
Now that you have identified your critical unknowns, it’s time to turn them into knowns. To do this, it is essential that we create our own data to validate or invalidate each assumption.
Small tests can be designed to gather such data, without having to build the entire solution. For example, a landing page advertising the training and seeking pre-registrations is a great way to see if anyone will actually show up, before you build it.
This is where you need to think closely about the assumptions you need to test and how you might run a test in a real environment, whilst actually building as little as possible
Step 4
(the final step)
Armed with real data you can now review whether the answers to your critical assumptions give you the confidence to proceed, or raise a red flag that you must solve for (good thing you found this early!).
Testing critical assumptions early is an essential practice for de-risking your projects. Not only does it prevent failure and wasted efforts for both your team and sponsors, it gives you time to address problems early and accelerate your journey to delivering value.
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Capability Development
Assumptions Testing for Project Teams
Course Outcomes
Understand how to identify assumptions using the Desirability / Feasibility / Viability / Risk model
Be able to setup and map assumptions for importance and knowledge
Have the tools and knowledge to facilitate an assumptions mapping workshop
Understand an array of methods for testing critical assumptions without big resources
Understand the process to designing and running a test with metrics for evaluation
Have the skills to present data back to key stakeholders
Delivery:
Online with videos, reading and 6-months access to a forum with other learners and mentors.
Duration:
Self-paced, generally 3-4 hours of theory and practice - start anytime
Course Fees:
US$450
Options:
Team learning available, please enquire
Register your interest.
We are currently taking pre-registrations. The course is due to be completed in mid-2021.
You will be contacted with updates and timeframes as they progress.
Further reading related to this capability
