Launching a product into the marketplace has never been faster, easier, or less expensive. But despite these advancements, your odds of failure still hover somewhere between 70-90%. This proves that the resources are almost never the barrier. Instead, your success is predicated on using those resources to test your assumptions, often before writing a line of code.
At Vervint, we take an approach called RAT, or your Riskiest Assumption Test. We use the RAT to frame Digital Experience & Connected Products engagements that aren’t just the first version of your product, but tests designed to answer the million-dollar question on which your product’s success depends.
As a product owner, this method can appear as one more thing in the way of your product launch. However, the seasoned product owner knows that ignoring your RAT in favor of a more traditional product build is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make.
What Does Building a Successful Connected Product Look Like?
What are the top considerations for building a new connected product that drives value for business and customers?
What is your riskiest assumption?
Your riskiest assumption might live in three areas: Feasibility, Viability, and Desirability.
Is it possible to make?
Testing: Feasibility
If you ask this question, you probably need a Proof of Concept. A Proof of Concept can be designed to mimic or even simulate the technical elements of your idea to see if it works as expected.
In an IoT environment, you may be testing if it’s possible to collect data from a certain activity – or maybe you’re testing a few different ways to collect data to determine which works best. If this is your riskiest assumption, it’s time to start tinkering to see what works.
Is the business or product viable?
Testing: Viability
Is your riskiest assumption that this idea will serve your business as you expect? This exercise is largely focused on the business model surrounding your product and its impact on your organization.
Analyzing the potential business model will help you determine whether this idea serves your business economically, strategically, or opportunistically. Secondly, it’s important to validate the value of that business model with key stakeholders and achieve alignment. Ultimately, you’ll need to get your stakeholders in a room and decide what success looks like and how it will fit into the big picture.
Do my target customers want it? Will they use it as intended?
Testing: Desirability
These questions are sometimes the most difficult to test and are often largely overlooked in product development. Are we building something relevant to enough people that it’s worthwhile to pursue? Will users engage with this in the way we expect them to?
Instead of launching a fully-featured product and waiting to see what happens, ask yourself, ‘Are there ways to simulate my product and measure user behavior first?” For example, a prototype or interface can be a great way to get real user feedback without spending time and money building a fully functional product. Conducting these experiments guarantees some critical learnings that will inform your end product (or, in some cases, whether or not it should be built at all).
Riskiest Assumption Test (RAT) vs. Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
We’ve all heard of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and it’s been a useful way to scope a project down to its necessary features rather than boil the ocean. However, several assumptions are built into that MVP, making it difficult to diagnose what is working for your product and what isn’t. Building an MVP often requires much of the same technical infrastructure that your actual product will, so it’s ineffective AND expensive.
Rather than starting with an MVP, using the Riskiest Assumption Test to guide your product development process will have you systematically validating each assumption before you’re over budget and out of the runway.
Do you need support? We’re happy to share project examples that were designed to answer these questions and move forward confidently. Contact us.
