Page 200

TOOL RISKIEST ASSUMPTION CANVAS

In your stack of assumptions, the riskiest one is the first gate. If when testing this assumption it continually comes back as “false,” you don’t get to pass go, you don’t get to collect your $200. This tool will help you rank your assumptions before moving on to experimentation.

Images

Images

Images

FOCUS

define riskiest assumptions

± 15–30 MIN

session

3–5

people per group

FINDING THE RISKIEST ASSUMPTION

Finding the riskiest assumption is not always easy. Discussing assumptions with your team will help to identify the ones to go after. Do this visually so it’s to the point and provides you with the outcome you need!

JENGA

Jenga is a game where players in turn try to remove blocks from a wooden tower. Each block that’s pulled out may make the tower collapse, but the blocks on the bottom are critical to keeping the tower upright.

Think of your idea as a big Jenga tower, where all of the bricks are assumptions. When one of the assumptions on the bottom of the stack is invalidated and the brick is removed, the entire tower may fall. When you remove one from the top, not much will happen.

We need to make sure that the base of the tower is safe. We need to start ...

Get Design a Better Business now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.