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Three Categories of Product Certainty

Tended 20 days ago Planted 20 days ago Mentioned 1 time

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Continuous Value Delivery Product Operating Model is the art of acting with incomplete information. We are never certain, and even when we have evidence we know that reality drifts, and what we are certain of today will need to be questioned tomorrow.

However, there are three categories of certainty that are used as inputs when making prioritization decisions.

  • Feasibility
    • Is this a thing that may require capabilities we don’t have or force us to significantly refactor?
  • Usability
    • Is this a thing that may cause confusion to the user, or is the worst case scenario it being ignored?
  • Viability
    • Is this going to be expensive to support, maintain, operationalize? Does the Value and Business benefit greatly outweigh the Cost?

Certainty is high when your tech lead is confident the value being shaped poses very little feasibility risk… your designer is confident the value being shaped poses very little usability risk… and your product manager / product marketing duo is confident the viability cost/benefit is weighted heavily on the benefit side.

Certainty is mid when even one of those three things is not true.

Certainty is low when 2+ of those things are not true.

Mentions

  • When to measure?

    …are three categories, 3 type of Insights, leading to 3 Tactics: * Categories * **[[Three Categories of Product Certainty]]** _(Usability, Feasibility, Viability)_ * **Intent** _or Actionability (Generative, Evaluative, Speculative)_ * [[Three…