{"id":406,"date":"2022-09-06T12:24:23","date_gmt":"2022-09-06T12:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/?p=406"},"modified":"2022-09-06T12:29:01","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T12:29:01","slug":"validating-ideas-and-identifying-opportunities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/06\/validating-ideas-and-identifying-opportunities\/","title":{"rendered":"Validating Ideas and Identifying Opportunities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>All products or features start with an idea and Ideas can come from anyone maybe through personal discovery or encountered problems, or for companies through external channels (<em>Customer Research &amp; Data, Competitor Analysis, Industry &amp; Technology trends<\/em>) or internal channels (<em>Existing Customer Research, Team Brainstorming, Internal analytics &amp; trends, or Customer Feedback<\/em>) regardless of the source, what matters most is to understand both the business short and long term goals and Identify opportunities for the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Getting a new product or feature idea is not enough, as a product manager or entrepreneur, you need to learn how to validate and prioritize ideas against the company goals. This can be achieved by validating:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol><li><strong><em>market demand,<\/em><\/strong><\/li><li><strong><em>the customer problem\/pain point, and<\/em><\/strong><\/li><li><strong><em>the product &#8211; if the solution is right or not.<\/em><\/strong><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>This validation can be done through a process called <strong>Assumption Mapping.<\/strong> <em>Assumptions mapping is an exercise in which a team unpacks any assumptions they may have about a new product or service&#8217;s feasibility, viability, and desirability. <\/em>Once outlined, each assumption is prioritized by importance and potential risk. It can be broken down into 3 steps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Step 1: <\/strong><em><strong>Break down the idea into a Customer Problem Statement: <\/strong><\/em>This is simply a statement that outlines problems that your customers face. It can be written by following the below template:<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><em>For [ <strong>Target Customer<\/strong> ]<br>Who has [ <strong>Customer Need <\/strong>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><em>[ <strong>Product Name<\/strong> ]<br>is a [ <strong>market category<\/strong> ]<\/em><br><em>That [ <strong>does these kinds of benefits<\/strong> ]<br>Unlike [ <strong>Competition <\/strong>]<\/em><br><em>My Product is [ <strong>Unique because of these reasons<\/strong> ]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><em>We\u2019ll know this is true when [ <strong>these objectives are met<\/strong>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Step 2: <em>Highlight and identify hidden assumptions in the problem and solution:<\/em><\/strong> From the customer problem statement, you can then identify the list of assumptions with your team while focusing on the customer needs and pain points.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Step 3: <em>Prioritize the riskiest assumptions using the risk importance graph:<\/em><\/strong> The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mindtools.com\/pages\/article\/newPPM_78.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Risk Importance Chart <\/a>provides a useful framework that helps you decide which risks need your attention the most. Do this by ranking each assumption based on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><em>Risk &#8211; How much do I really know about this? (1 &#8211; 10)<\/em><\/li><li><em>Importance &#8211; If we get this wrong, how likely will we fail? (1 &#8211; 10)<\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>After you have prioritized your assumptions, you need to choose those of high risk and Impact, these are the ones you need to prioritize during user research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the next article, I will work you through how to validate problems through constructive customer interviews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All products or features start with an idea and Ideas can come from anyone maybe through personal discovery or encountered problems, or for companies through external channels (Customer Research &#038; Data, Competitor Analysis, Industry &#038; Technology trends)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mood":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407,"href":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babatunderaji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}