Assumption Mapping Expert

Overview

Systematically identify, categorize, and prioritize the assumptions underlying your product decisions. This skill extends Teresa Torres' four risk categories with four additional categories for new products, and uses a devil's advocate approach from PM, Designer, and Engineer perspectives to surface hidden assumptions.

When to Use

• After ideation, before committing to build.
• When a product decision "feels right" but has not been validated.
• When the team disagrees on risk or priority -- assumptions make disagreements explicit.
• Before designing experiments -- test the riskiest assumptions first.

Risk Categories

Core 4 Categories (Existing Products)

These four categories come from Teresa Torres' Continuous Discovery Habits and cover the primary risks for features within an established product:

Category	Question It Answers	Example Assumption
Value	Will customers want this?	"Users will prefer AI-generated summaries over manual note-taking."
Usability	Can customers figure out how to use it?	"Users will understand the drag-and-drop interface without a tutorial."
Viability	Can the business sustain this?	"The feature will generate enough upgrades to justify the engineering cost."
Feasibility	Can we build this?	"Our current infrastructure can handle real-time processing at scale."

Extended 8 Categories (New Products)

For new products, four additional risk categories become critical:

Category	Question It Answers	Example Assumption
Ethics	Should we build this? Are there unintended harms?	"Collecting location data will not create privacy concerns for our target segment."
Go-to-Market	Can we reach and acquire customers?	"Our target segment actively searches for solutions on Google, making SEO viable."
Strategy & Objectives	Does this align with where we want to go?	"Entering the SMB market will not dilute our enterprise positioning."
Team	Do we have the right people and skills?	"Our team can learn the required ML skills within the project timeline."

Methodology

Phase 1: Devil's Advocate Assumption Surfacing

For each product idea or decision, adopt three adversarial perspectives:

PM Devil's Advocate "I challenge whether this is worth building."

• Is there real demand, or are we projecting our own preferences?
• Will this move the metric we care about?
• Can we sustain this economically?
• Does this align with strategy, or is it a distraction?

Designer Devil's Advocate "I challenge whether users will actually use this."

• Will users discover this feature?
• Can they complete the task without help?
• Does this add complexity that hurts the overall experience?
• Are we designing for edge cases and assuming they are common?

Engineer Devil's Advocate "I challenge whether we can build and maintain this."

• Do we have the technical skills and infrastructure?
• What are the hidden dependencies and integration risks?
• Can this scale if it succeeds?
• What is the ongoing maintenance burden?

Phase 2: Categorize Each Assumption

For each assumption surfaced, assign:

Field	Options
Description	Clear, specific statement of what must be true
Risk Category	Value / Usability / Viability / Feasibility / Ethics / Go-to-Market / Strategy / Team
Confidence	High (we have strong evidence) / Medium (some evidence, not conclusive) / Low (gut feeling or no evidence)
Impact	1-10 scale (if this assumption is wrong, how bad is it?)

Phase 3: Prioritize Using Impact x Risk Matrix

Calculate a risk score for each assumption:

Risk Score = Impact x (1 - Confidence)

Where confidence maps to: High = 0.8, Medium = 0.5, Low = 0.2

Impact	Confidence	Risk Score	Meaning
9	Low (0.2)	7.2	Critical -- test immediately
9	High (0.8)	1.8	Important but well-understood
3	Low (0.2)	2.4	Low priority
3	High (0.8)	0.6	Ignore

Phase 4: Classify into Quadrants

Place each assumption on a 2x2 matrix:

                    HIGH IMPACT
                        |
     Proceed with       |     Test Now
     Confidence         |     (highest priority)
                        |
  ──────────────────────┼──────────────────────
                        |
     Defer              |     Investigate
     (low priority)     |     (may be important)
                        |
                    LOW IMPACT

         LOW RISK ◄─────┼─────► HIGH RISK

Quadrant	Impact	Risk	Action
Test Now	High	High	Design an experiment immediately
Proceed	High	Low	Move forward with monitoring
Investigate	Low	High	Gather more data, may upgrade to Test Now
Defer	Low	Low	Accept the risk, revisit if context changes

Phase 5: Suggest Tests

For each "Test Now" assumption, recommend a validation approach:

Assumption Type	Suggested Test Methods
Value assumptions	Customer interviews, fake door test, landing page test
Usability assumptions	Usability test (5 users), prototype walkthrough
Viability assumptions	Financial modeling, pricing experiment, unit economics analysis
Feasibility assumptions	Technical spike, proof of concept, architecture review
Ethics assumptions	Ethics review board, user consent study, regulatory consultation
Go-to-Market assumptions	Channel experiment, SEO keyword test, paid ad test
Strategy assumptions	Strategy review with leadership, competitive analysis
Team assumptions	Skills assessment, hiring timeline analysis, training feasibility

Python Tool: assumption_tracker.py

Track and prioritize assumptions using the CLI tool:

# Run with demo data
python3 scripts/assumption_tracker.py --demo

# Run with custom input
python3 scripts/assumption_tracker.py input.json

# Output as JSON
python3 scripts/assumption_tracker.py input.json --format json

Input Format

{
  "assumptions": [
    {
      "description": "Users will prefer AI summaries over manual notes",
      "category": "value",
      "confidence": "low",
      "impact": 9
    }
  ]
}

Output

Sorted by risk priority with quadrant classification and suggested actions.

See scripts/assumption_tracker.py for full documentation.

Output Format

Assumption Registry

#	Assumption	Category	Confidence	Impact	Risk Score	Quadrant
1	...	Value	Low	9	7.2	Test Now
2	...	Feasibility	Medium	8	4.0	Test Now
3	...	Usability	High	7	1.4	Proceed
4	...	GTM	Low	3	2.4	Investigate

Action Plan for "Test Now" Assumptions

For each assumption in the Test Now quadrant, document:

• Assumption description
• Why it is high risk
• Suggested validation method
• Owner and timeline

Use assets/assumption_map_template.md for the full template.

Integration with Other Discovery Skills

• Use brainstorm-ideas/ to generate ideas whose assumptions you will map.
• Feed "Test Now" assumptions into brainstorm-experiments/ for experiment design.
• Run pre-mortem/ to catch risks that assumption mapping might miss (especially elephants).

References

• Teresa Torres, Continuous Discovery Habits (2021)
• David J. Bland & Alexander Osterwalder, Testing Business Ideas (2019)
• Ash Maurya, Running Lean (2012)
• Marty Cagan, Inspired (2018)