NOTES

This is a good way to do an early litmus test of how far along you are on formulating the business. You should, of course, feel free to come back to it and revise it often in these early phases.

Geoff Moore (of Crossing the Chasm) offers this syntax for a positioning statement:

For (target customer) who (statement of the need or opportunity), the (product name) is a (product category) that (statement of key benefit – that is, compelling reason to buy). Unlike (primary alternative), our product (statement of primary differentiation).

EXAMPLE POSITIONING STATEMENT FROM ENABLE QUIZ

The positioning statement for Enable Quiz is [brackets added to help you connect it with the item below only]:

For [hiring managers] who [need to evaluate technical talent], [Enable Quiz] is a [skills measurement system] that [allows for quick and easy assessment of topical understanding in key engineering topics]. Unlike [formal certifications or ad hoc questions], our product [allows HR managers to create and apply systematic assessments of technical skills].

Here you’ll create a humanized view of who your customers are, be they buyer and/or user of your product. You’ll also hypothesize what’s important to them with problem scenarios, what they’re doing about it now with alternatives, and what you’re going to do that matters with value propositions.

Thinks

[INSERT- In your particular area of interest, what are the key thoughts, ideas this persona has?]

Sees

INSERT- [In your particular area of interest, what are the notable observations your persona is making?]

Feels

[INSERT- Regarding your particular area of interest, how do they really feel? What underlying emotions might be driving their point of view and behavior?]

Does

[INSERT- The ‘actuals’. As applicable: What triggers activity in your area of interest? How often? For how long? How much money?]

Problem Scenarios/JTBD

Current Alternatives

Your Value Proposition

[INSERT- What problems, needs does the persona have in your area?]

[INSERT- Instead of using your product, what do they do right now to solve this problem/meet this need?]

[INSERT- What product ideas do the problem scenarios and current alternatives give you?]

[add as needed]

[add as needed]

[add as needed]

[add as needed]

[add as needed]

[add as needed]

Here you’ll lay out the questions you’ll use to go out and really discover/test your ideas about personas, problem scenarios, and alternatives.

Note: The idea is to develop your questions here and then copy them into Appendix A where you’ll keep your transcripts.

Questions

Tell me about [yourself in the role of the persona]?

Tell me about [your area of interest]?

(area of interest is the general space that you’re looking at- measurement of technical skills in the case of Enable Quiz, for example)

Tell me your thoughts about [area]?        

What do you see in [area]?        

What do you feel about [area]?

What do you do in [area]?

Questions

How do you currently [operate in area of interest- if you don’t have that yet]? OR Here’s what I got on [x]- is that right?

What’s [difficult, annoying] about [area of interest]?

What are the top [5] hardest things about [area of interest]?        

What are the top 5 things you want to do better this year in [general area of interest]?

Why is/isn’t [your specific area of interest on that list]?        

Questions

Casting a Line (“Anything else?”)

Housekeeping and Follow Up

NOTES

Before you move on to testing solution, I like to answer the ‘dumb question’ about exactly what I’m solving for, and this is where I like to use this ‘venture hypothesis’ format to summarize the work above on ‘solving the right problem’:

‘A certain [Persona(s)] exists…

…and they have certain [Problem Scenario(s)].

Currently, they’re [using certain Alternatives], but…

…if we [offer our target Value Proposition], then…

…we'll observe [success through Pivotal Metrics- acquisition, onboarding, engagement, retention, etc.] .'

EXAMPLE VENTURE HYPOTHESIS FROM ENABLE QUIZ

The venture hypothesis for Enable Quiz is [brackets added to help you connect it with the item below only]:

There are [HR Managers in charge of recruiting technical talent],

and they [need to screen recruits for the specific technical skills in a job description].

Currently, they [do their best by checking references and asking a few questions], but

if we [offer a way to automate quizzing for a specific job description], then

we’ll observe [HR Managers creating and using quizzes and standardizing on use of the platform for new hires.]

Here you’ll work through value proposition design, linking it to testable idea about why your customer is going to buy/use what you’re creating (ala Lean Startup).

If we provide HR managers with a tool for lightweight quizzing, then they will try it, buy it, standardize on it, and it will improve their company's hiring outcomes.

Item

Acquisition

Onboarding

Engagement

Outcome

What does this mean?

What is the interval for an observation?

How might we test this?

What are the metrics?

What’s tricky? What do we need to watch out for?

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Hypothesis

Needs Proving?

Experiment (MVP) Vehicles, Metrics, and Notes

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Here you’ll lay out effective experiments to testing your proposition and make sure you’re building something that someone wants.

What hypothesis will this test?

[Add. You’ll probably want to link to something above (Assuming it’s not a heading, you can make the hypothesis link-able with Insert>>Bookmark and then create the link here with Insert >> Link.)]

How will we test it?

[Add. How will the experiment work? How will you acquire subjects? What experience are you designing for them?]

What is/are the pivotal metric(s)?

What is the threshold for true (validated) vs. false (invalidated)?

[Add. If the experiment is supposed to produce some kind of definitive result, this should probably be quantitative.

If it’s a discovery exercise, then probably not. If not, skip the next item on thresholds, but the remaining items will help you focus, plan, and manage the discovery engagement.]

[Add thresholds. Even if you’re totally unsure it’s still good to take a position on this.

That may sound arbitrary or even wasteful, but in practice if you don’t get on the deciding-with-metrics-train someplace, it will probably pass you by. If you find your threshold is off (ex: a different threshold constitutes success) then it’s perfectly OK to explicitly change your threshold.

The point is to get on the train.]

What will you do next if the result is true? False?

[If true/validated, we will then … which will move us toward our goal of …]

[If false/invalidated, we will then … which will move us toward our goal of …]

How much time, money will it take to set up?

[To set up the experiment it will take:

- [$] and [y] hours of [type of work by type of person]

- [$] and [y] hours of [type of work by type of person]

]

Roughly, what will it take for each individual test?

[For each test which is [x], it will take:

- [$] and [y] hours of [type of work by type of person]

- [$] and [y] hours of [type of work by type of person]

]

Roughly, how long will it take for each  test to run and produce definitive, actionable results?

[Each test will take roughly [x time] to produce results…]

Did the experiment work?

[Regardless of your conclusions, did the experimental design fundamentally work? Did it deliver the metrics you expected? Why or why not?

What was the sample size and the results?

[How many individuals, etc. did you test? What were the aggregate results?]

Conclusions?

[What’s your conclusion?]

Here you’ll translate what you’ve learned and what’s right for the product into testable narrative you can use to drive high quality collaboration with your (agile) development team..

Story

Notes & Analytics (general and analytics-related)

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NOTES

At the foundation of your venture should be your personas & problem scenarios: what is your point of view on the customer and what they want? At the operational core, you have lean style experimentation- an ongoing evidence-based innovation process for both product and promotion. The Business Model Canvas (not mentioned in the items above) is a good way to articulate your business model and the table below shows resources for that. User stories & test cases then guide your executions on product and promotion. These items together provide a high-functioning set of tools and explicit, sharable definitions of what you’re doing.

If you then need to write a traditional business plan or investor pitch for a certain audience, go ahead and do that. Just don’t make the mistake of having that be your core item for managing the business.

Here are a few items that will help you in this area:

AUDIENCE 

(Name? Company?

Do they map to a persona?)

[add notes]

VENUE/CIRCUMSTANCE

(Where? Why?)

[add notes]

NOTES ON THE PERSONA

(What was on their A-list? What were they like? Think-See-Feel-Do?)

[add notes]

NOTES ON PROBLEM SCENARIOS

(Which ones did they have?

What alternatives?

What value propositions might resonate?)

[add notes]

INSIGHTS ON PERSONAS & PROBLEM SCENARIOS

(How did the interview prove or disprove key hypotheses on your personas and problem scenarios? How else did they change your point of view)

[add notes]

OTHER INSIGHTS

(Right them down ASAP after you have them! Otherwise, you’ll probably forget.)

[add notes]

Here you’ll lay out effective testing of your user interfaces.

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Item

Notes

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2

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Est. v. Actual (min.)

Notes

1

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MODERATOR GUIDE

[…]

OUTPUT

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2

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MODERATOR GUIDE

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OUTPUT

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3

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MODERATOR GUIDE

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OUTPUT

[…]

…

…

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Personas & Problem Scenarios

[…]

UI and User Stories

[…]

Post-Test Debrief & (optionally) Footage

[if you want to record the test, you can link to that here]

Item

Notes on Diagnosis

PERSONA CHECK

Can we find 10 people that will love the product?

Could they lead to 100 more? Then 1,000?

Do we know how they relate to our area?

[Does the customer exist and do you know them? An example for Enable Quiz notes here might be:

The HR Manager, Functional Manager pairs exist at nearly all the companies where we’ve done discovery. The HR Manager generally wants to do more and the Functional Manager generally wishes they could do more on recruiting.]

PROBLEM CHECK

Does our problem matter enough?

Do we hear it as a response to open-ended questions?

Do we understand the alternatives in detail?

[Is your problem on their A-list? An example for Enable Quiz notes here might be:

We don’t hear ‘screening candidates’ as an answer to ‘What’s hard about being an HR Manager’ but we do hear it from both personas consistently in answer to ‘What’s hard about the recruiting process for engineers?’].

VALUE HYPOTHESIS CHECK

Do we have a tightly defined proposition?

[You’ll struggle (read for startup: never) rise above the noise floor if you’re an interesting thing to potentially lots of people vs. a bullseye for at least a few people. An example for Enable Quiz notes here might be:

Our core value hypothesis is: If we offer HR managers at companies that hire a lot of engineers a lightweight quizzing app, they will convert to paid subscriptions after an unpaid trial.

We think this is the right scope and focus to deliver on the problem and loans itself to rapid, high-value testing (see next item).]

VALUE DISCOVERY CHECK

How can we test it in the next 48 hours?

[The best tests are quick, creative, and aligned to where you are. An example for Enable Quiz notes here might be:

We think a concierge test with quizzes on Google Doc’s will allow us to a) test the core value hypothesis and b) better understand the whole cusotmer/customer team interaction with the hypothetical product. ‘A’ is the most important for obvious reasons but we also have a lot of learning to do on the actual contours of the solution.]

PRE-DEV CHECK

Do we really need SW to move forward?

Are we ready to narrate what the project needs?  

Test it often to avoid waste?

[Make sure you can articulate all substantial customer interactions with the product- not just the general arc of what the product’s supposed to do. The Enable Quiz in the examples above is NOT ready to built software. Let’s say they’ve validated their value hypothesis and learned enough about the quizzing process to build software. One of their epic stories might be:

‘As the HR manager, I want to create a screening quiz so that I can understand whether I want to send possible recruits to the functional manager.’

They’ve defined the building blocks they need for this and looked at comparables and UI patterns. Can you describe the functional experiences you want the user to have at least at this level of detail?.]

Item

Notes on Diagnosis

What was the execution and what constituted success/validation? What actually happened?

[If you were testing a feature pre-release, this would be the customer outcomes you hope to see. For instance, if Enable Quiz was testing a new interface for quiz creation, their answer might be:

We’re building a new quiz interface and we hope to see 90% of HR Manager users creating their first quiz within 7 days without contacting support.

Out of [n] signup’s, [x%] of our HR Manager users creating a working quiz within [y] days, constituting [validation, invalidation] of our current execution]

Did our testing predict our outcomes?

[At a high level, I like to divide up testing into work that delivers on three main buckets-

Persona & Problem Hypothesis: Discovery interviews & observation.

Value Hypothesis: MVP & other product proxy testing.

Usability Hypothesis: Product usability against specific (supplied) goals. For more, see the ‘Customer Discovery Handbook’.

Depending on your execution, you may wish to take note on your work of against any or all of these.

For example, if Enable Quiz had validated their persona, problem, and value hypotheses and was principally focused on onboarding customers out in ‘the wild’, their answer might be:

Persona Hypothesis: After interviewing dozens of subjects screening into the ‘HR Manager’ and ‘Functional Manager’ personas, we have converged on a consistent set of perspectives and points of view. Future re-segmentation is likely but for an initial offering, we feel we have a solid working validation of what drives these personas.

Problem Hypothesis: Generally in response to broad questions about HR management and hiring by the HR managers and functional managers (respectively), we have consistently heard from HR managers that screening technical candidates is a top problem and for functional managers that spending enough time on recruiting is a top problem. Our current point of view is that this constitutes an adequate working validation of our pivotal problem scenarios.  

Value Hypothesis: We have run two MVP vehicles to test our value hypothesis. The first, a concierge MVP, was a set of custom-built paper quizzes for a sample of 5 HR managers involved in technical recruiting. Our 0 day test was to make sure we could create relevant quizzes against their job descriptions (check). Our 30 day test was to see how frequently the HR managers were actually using the quizzes. We knew this because they would email them to us for grading. Usage was in line with our expectations (around 75% of candidates). Our 90 day test was to see if the quizzes were driving better outcomes for their hiring. We’re still monitoring these for a more definitive/controlled result but the initial results are positive.

Usability Hypothesis: We moved from exploratory to assessment to (rough) validation testing with the 1.0 interface. 90% of the subjects were able to complete a quiz against an open position in validation testing.

Testing vs. Actuals: Our testing would have predicted that roughly [x%] to [y%] of the HR manager users would successful create a quiz. In the field, we were at [z%], which is a relatively [good, bad] rate of predictability and we plan to [look at the results more, as applicable].

NOTE: Your work may have more gaps than this (hypothetical) firm. Don’t feel like you have to have all these items nailed- the purpose of this exercise is to identify where you have your most important gaps in understanding and validation.

What understanding we were implementing?

[Here your job is to note the inputs- user stories and (possibly) wireframes. For Enable Quiz this might look something like:

The user stories and prototypes we implemented against are in sections [X] & [Y] of the Venture Design. We feel these described the implementation reasonably well and [other ideas]. ]

What were the key propositions? Hypotheses?

[Here your job is to make sure your proposition(s), the definition of what you’re doing that’s better enough than the alternative at solving user problems, is clearly laid out and linked to the previous items. Here’s an example from Enable Quiz:

The key proposition here was about the value to the HR manager of being able to better screen technical talent and how that would drive both the effectiveness and hiring outcomes for the functional manager. Generally, the assumptions regarding the usefulness of screening to the HR Manager are relatively well validated. The impact (and perception of that impact) and outcomes for the functional manager we’re still investigating and testing. The specifics are available in the hypothesis section. ]

What problem were we solving? Was it important? Better than the alternatives?

[Here your job is to clearly lay out the problem scenario(s) and alternative(s) you’re addressing. Here’s an example from Enable Quiz:

Our core problem area is the recruitment of technical talent. Under that problem, we’re principally interested in problem scenarios around how HR managers screen technical talent at the front end of the recruiting process, where currently they use a patchwork of references and paperwork review (resume, etc.). For more detail see [section herein with problem scenarios].]

Who were we doing this for and do we know what makes them tick?

[Here your job is to make sure the above items connect backward and anchor in relevance to one or more personas, be those buyers and/or users of your product. Here’s an example for Enable Quiz:

We have two principal personas: Helen the HR Manager and Frank the Functional Manager. Helen’s key motivation is to contribute more to one of her firm’s key activities- technical recruiting. We think that our ability to help her do more through lightweight technical screening quizzes is what’s pivotal to the purchase and use of our product.

Frank the Functional manager will see substantial benefit once the product is in place in the form of less time wasted on non-qualified candidates and ultimately better recruiting outcomes. ]

Items- Checklist

Notes on Diagnosis

Persona

:: Photos?

:: Does the description reflect what you’ve learned about key facets of what makes them tick? Their day?

:: Can you think of at least 5 examples of the persona?

:: Does the ‘Think’ reflect the tension between how they’d like things to be vs. how they are now?

:: Does the ‘See’ reflect the points of contact and influence you’ve observed?

:: Does the ‘Feel’ speak to the emotional drivers that you think will motivate action?

:: Do you know what the persona specifically ‘Does’ in your area of interest? How much/how often?

:: Does your interview guide draw out the answers to the above?

:: Does your day in the life shed light on key moments in their day?

:: Did you push yourself to test actionability of the persona with Google AdWord concepts?

[How has your perspective on the persona evolved?

What turned out to be important?

How did your screener and interview guide work out? What would you/did you change?

What would you most like to learn more about?]

Problem Scenarios

:: What are the important problem scenarios? Alternatives?

:: How do they look when you think upward in terms of abstraction (why?) and downward (how?)?

[What problems turned out to matter vs. not?

Are you able to tie all your user stories back to problem scenarios?]

Value Propositions

:: Do you have VP’s that deliver against the Problem Scenarios and Personas above?

:: Do your Before & After storyboard(s) help you think about and communicate those propositions?

:: Did you describe them in the Business Model Canvas (optional)?

[How has your view of the propositions evolved?

What’s important and likely to be valuable?

How does that differ between segments (sides of a marketplace, for example) and personas?]

Your Project as Experiment

:: What are your most important hypotheses?

:: How does your AIDAOR storyboard and journey map help you think through those hypotheses?

:: Are they framed in testable terms: If we [x == do something] for [y == persona] then they will [z == respond in a certain, measurable way].

[How has your view of the hypotheses changed?

Beyond your core Value Hypothesis of whether buyers/users will come, what others have emerged as important?]

Testing Motivation

:: What experiments could you run and are they structured in the template with hypotheses,, methods, metrics, and post-experiment actions?

:: What is the scrappiest thing you could do in the next 48 hours to test customer motivation? (Not that doing so is part of the assignment)

[Based on what you know now, do you see better opportunities or ideas to test motivation before you (or the venture’s principals) spend time and money on the venture?]

Narrative Collaboration via User Stories & Wireframes

:: Do you have epics and then child stories and test cases that describe them?

:: Did you storyboard the key epics to get at detail?

:: Did you pull applicable comparables and UI patterns to help you build on best practice for the key stories?

:: Did you wireframe the key stories to think about implementation?

[How has your view of the specific customer narratives evolved?

Do you think they’re ready for implementation?

What best practices do you think you can leverage to maximize existing behavior models on the part of the user?

Do the user stories tie back to your work elsewhere? Do they tie back to your problem scenarios?]

Usability Testing

:: Do you have an exploratory testing design that’s anchored in user stories?

:: Do your interactive wireframes support it?

:: Have you tried it out? What insights did it yield?

[How has your view of how to execute the user testing evolved as you exercised your test suite (stories, wireframes, script, test design)?

What changes, focal points did the user testing provide?]

Keywords

Final URL

Headline 1

Headline 2

Path

/

Description

Notes (to self)