You’re considering building an app, but the potential risks are preventing you from making a decision. Discover how the assumptions mapping technique can help you validate these hypotheses and boost your digital product’s chances of success.

If you wonder about your app idea’s potential, and if it will be desirable, viable, and feasible, the assumptions mapping technique can help. This workshop technique can help product owners or product managers identify what they don’t know and reduce risk from the very beginning.

As a Scrum Master at Droids on Roids for almost 4 years, I have had the opportunity to lead assumptions mapping workshops several times. I have seen first-hand how these simple techniques increase your confidence in your business idea and plan better product decisions.

What you can find in the article

In this article, you will find out:

  • what the assumptions mapping technique is
  • what are the benefits for your business
  • how the workshops work
  • a read-to-use template
  • expert advice

What is assumptions mapping?

When coming up with a new idea for an application or any other product, we rely on certain assumptions. We assume that the product will be successful, profitable, etc. Assumptions mapping is a team exercise that enables us to analyze these assumptions. The workshop lets you know which of your assumptions are correct, and which may be risky and require further analysis.

Assumptions mapping is a team exercise that enables us to analyze these assumptions.

Why is assumption mapping important?

Validating your assumptions can help you make better business decisions. See what benefits this one technique can bring you:

  1. Identifying risks before they occur – helps catch a risky assumption before it turns into costly implications, basically saving your time and money.
  2. Makes decision-making easier – your decisions will be justified, and based on proven knowledge.
  3. It helps put together a meaningful plan of action – knowing your risky assumptions, you can take certain steps to minimize the risk.
  4. Gives a better chance that the product will be a success in the market – by making sure it is built on real user needs and validated insights.
why assumption map is important

How to get started with assumption mapping

Now, let’s get down to specifics, and see what exactly is being analyzed during teamwork.

The main steps of creating the assumption map

Step 1: Identify your hypotheses

List all the assumptions you have about the product. The specific questions you will learn about in a moment will help you identify these hypotheses.

Step 2: Prioritize the hypotheses

Prioritization will help you find what is most important and focus on that.

Step 3: Identify and test the riskiest assumptions

By testing assumptions, you can avoid decisions with high risk.

steps to create an assumptions map

Step 1: What are the types of hypotheses used in assumption mapping?

During the exercise, teams analyze three types of hypotheses that have a key impact on how your product will be received by your target group and on the growth of your business.

These three areas are:

1. Desirability assumptions – Do your users want it? A user-centered area.

2. Feasibility assumptions – Can we do this? Is your idea feasible? A highly technical area.

3. Viability assumptions – Should we do this? Is the idea profitable and compatible with your business model? A business area.

types of hypotheses in assumption map

Desirability hypotheses

Checking the product’s desirability is key. Your product’s success in the marketplace depends on whether it gains customer recognition. The more tailored it is to their real needs, the more loveable it will be and can even go viral. Below, you can find questions worth asking in order to check desirability assumptions:

  • Who are the target customers for our solution?
  • What problem do our clients want to solve?
  • How are our clients solving this problem today?
  • Why our customers currently can’t solve this problem?
  • What result do our clients want to achieve?

Feasibility hypotheses

Feasibility assumptions are those hypotheses that help you to test whether the idea is technically feasible, what technology it will require, what prior experiments or preparations, etc. To check feasibility assumptions, you can ask:

  • What are our biggest technological challenges?
  • What is our biggest legal or regulatory risk?
  • What are the obstacles regarding our internal policy and management?
  • Why does our organization support this solution?
  • How will our solution make money for itself?

Viability assumptions

Checking the viability assumptions is important for any business. The questions in this section will allow you to see if the product will be consistent with your business model, and if will be able to make money:

  • What are our main customer acquisition channels?
  • How can we encourage customers to use our solution?
  • How do we encourage customers to recommend our solution to others?
  • How does this solution support our company’s vision?
  • Who are the main competitors in the context of our solution?
Questions for each assumption type

Step 2: 4 types of priorities

After step one, which is the identification of important hypotheses, we move on to prioritization. This step lets you focus on what is the critical key to move on.

For prioritization, in this case, we use the matrix available below:

Prioritisation matrix for testing assumptions

The matrix is divided into four areas. The horizontal axis divides the assumptions into known and unknown ones. What does it mean? It means that for some of your assumptions, you have some proof (you have done market research, technically checked, etc.), and some are unproven hypotheses.

The vertical axis divides assumptions by their importance. How do you decide which one is important? Ask yourself whether, if your assumption turned out to be proven as false, it would jeopardize the success of your product. The greater the threat, the more important the assumption.

Assumptions in the bottom left quadrant are not important and you already know them. You can simply defer them for later.

For known and important assumptions in the top left quadrant, you can plan the next actions.

The bottom right quadrant indicates that assumptions are unknown and not important. Therefore, keep generating them and return to the exercise after a while.

The most important for you will be the top right quadrant. Those are valid and unknown assumptions that can be a risk for your product. Identify and test them. 

Step 3: Identify and test the riskiest assumptions

You’ve already identified potential risks, so what’s next?

To avoid costly mistakes, business owners can test and validate their ideas before entering full development. Here are some key techniques divided by the type of assumption to derisk a mobile app idea:

Derisk desirability hypotheses

Desirability is a user-centered area, so you will need to test them on real users. You can use:

Interviews, Surveys, and Field Tests

  • Talk to potential users to understand their needs and pain points.
  • Use surveys to gather insights on customer interest and expectations.
  • Test in real-world scenarios to see if the idea solves a real problem.

Usability Tests

  • Create early prototypes and let users interact with them.
  • Identify issues with design, navigation, and user experience before full development.

Derisk feasibility hypotheses

Technical areas of focus can be checked by:

Technical Investigation

  • Check if the app idea is technically feasible.
  • Identify potential challenges, required integrations, and estimated costs.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

  • Build a simple version of the app with core features.
  • Launch to early users, gather feedback, and improve before full-scale development.

Prove of Concept (POC)

  • Build a minimum product to see if a solution is technically possible.

Derisk viability hypotheses

To check the business potential, you can for example:

Market Analysis

  • Research competitors and industry trends to find market gaps.
  • Analyze demand to ensure there is a real need for the app.
testing assumptions mapping

By using these methods, you can validate the idea, reduce risks, and increase the chances of success before making a big investment.

Assumptions mapping template

Ready to run the exercise? Below you will find templates for each of the three steps of assumption mapping.

Click here to download the templates.

Assumptions mapping workshop

What else can be prepared before you start working with your team?

  • You should think carefully about your vision, business strategy, and product goals. You can read more here: Product Goals and Metrics and Product Success Metrics.
  • Decide who will be your target persona, and what their need is.
  • Decide who should be involved during assumptions mapping workshops: it is a good practice to have at least one expert in each type of hypothesize:
    • Desirability assumptions – UX researcher and/or UX Product Designer.
    • Feasibility assumptions – Developer, Legal specialist.
    • Viability assumptions – Business owner, Product manager, Business analyst.
Assumptions mapping workshop

Assumptions mapping with Droids On Roids

Assumption mapping is one of the workshop techniques we frequently use at Droids on Roids.

In one of our projects, we had several options for implementing the core functionality. The assumptions mapping technique enabled us to find the most optimal form regarding technical, usability, and compatibility aspects with the business model. 

In another case, during a workshop, it turned out that the client’s assumptions were not validated in any way. This allowed us to plan a series of UX studies, saving time and money on implementing an untested idea. 

It is worth mentioning that this technique can and even should be used repeatedly over the lifecycle of a product. Each time a product enters a new phase, checking if what we assume makes sense helps us to create better products.

At Droids on Roids, we can prepare and conduct workshops for you from A to Z, including both stationary and online. We will make sure that the right specialists participate and help you plan the next steps. Contact us if you want to know more details.

Wrapping up 

Building a successful app is more than just having a great idea – it’s about validating your assumptions and reducing risks before investing time and money. Assumption mapping is a powerful technique that helps you identify what you don’t know, prioritize what matters, and test the riskiest assumptions early on. The more you validate before development, the fewer surprises you’ll face along the way.