The Weekly Summary

Assumptions underpin every solution we devise. However, articulating these assumptions on a blank canvas can be challenging. Marty Cagan and Teresa Torres advocate categorising assumptions into Desirability, Usability, Feasibility, and Viability to make it easier to identify things you might forget. (See the link below for more info)

Recently a fifth category has been added, Ethical assumptions. Unintended consequences abound in software from the addictiveness of games to the social impacts of social networks or to the bad actor usage of AI. When you're a tiny startup, or launching a new product, would you dream of being so successful that these impacts occur? Over-engineering or addressing hypothetical problems can divert teams from their primary objective: offering a valuable product. This may sound overly capitalistic but a company that does not self-regulate will have a competitive advantage over others that do.

I'm leaning against adding Ethical as a fifth assumption category because I think it will add overhead without clear benefits 95%+ of the time. I subscribe to the idea of strong beliefs, weakly held though so I am open to changing my mind. What are your thoughts?

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

Q: Do you regularly map your product metrics to your business metrics?

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

Building A Culture Where Employees Feel Free To Speak Up by Timothy R. Clark
Timothy explains the importance of free communication among employees, as it circulates knowledge, broadens ideas and prevents tunnel vision.

Show Me The Incentive, I’ll Show You The Outcome by Martin Conlon
Martin shares examples of how companies have lost their way by focusing too much on the incentive and not enough on the outcome.

Product Direction

Zone Of Control Vs Sphere Of Influence by Gojko Adzic
How can these concepts be applied to refine user stories in delivery teams? Discover the importance of understanding where a user story sits in the system.

Strategy, In Reverse by Matthew Daniels
An exploration of the traditional strategy process and its inefficiencies, advocating for a more agile approach with 5-day idea sprints.

Continuous Discovery

The ‘Data-Driven’ Mindset Feeds Our Dangerous Craving For Certainty by Kyle Byrd
Explore with Kyle the pitfalls of a purely data-driven approach.

Job Stories by Datopian
A deep dive into Jobs to be Done Job Stories because they emphasise the importance of context and situational understanding.

Continuous Design

The Constant Tension Between Design Tools And Soft Skills by Shumroze Bhat
Some more fuel for the eternal argument between the relative importance of design tools vs. honing interpersonal skills.

Evaluating Solutions: The 5 Types of Assumptions that Underlie Our Ideas by Teresa Torres
Testing assumptions is critical to evaluate which ideas will work and which will not. Teresa covers the five key assumption cateogries.

Continuous Delivery

Test-Driven Development with AI: The Right Way to Code Using Generative AI by Allen Helton How Amazon use Chaos Engineering to validate the efficacy of their high-scale distributed services that power Search on Amazon.com.

On The Importance Of Naming In Programming by Martin Sosic
Naming things is hard. But it is incredibly valuable. Martin discusses the pitfalls of bad nomenclature.

The Bulletin Board

We’re back with our FREE online events this week. If you want to learn about Product Prioritisation using Design Thinking and Boosting Design Quality then this is the event for you. You can register for your free ticket, and watch the event, directly on UXDX.

• Time: 7.30pm CET / 1:30pm EDT

• Date: 24th October

Join us for an unforgettable event!

Join Us

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