Validating Assumptions: Adding Value at Any Stage of the Product Life Cycle

A talk on validating assumptions: the cheapest time to test a belief is before you have built around it, and the habit pays off at every stage that follows. I gave it at NYC Burst Week 2022, a client-facing event at the Tanzu Labs (VMware) New York office. It ran in two halves.

Part one: the theory

What an assumption actually is, why the unexamined ones are the expensive ones, and a set of lightweight ways to test a belief no matter where a product sits in its life cycle, from a sketch with no code behind it to a live product with real users.

Part two: the exercise

The room paired up, took a real idea, surfaced the riskiest assumption underneath it, and designed the smallest test that would show whether it held. The point was to leave with a method people could run on Monday, not just a framework on a slide.

What people left with

• ▹ Name the riskiest assumption before you build anything around it.
• ▹ Validation fits any stage; only the method changes as the product matures.
• ▹ Favor the cheapest test that still reduces real uncertainty.