assumption-mapping_skill

Overview

This skill surfaces, prioritizes, and tracks risky assumptions before you invest significant effort in a project. It helps teams convert vague beliefs into testable statements, score them by impact and uncertainty, and pick the highest-priority validations to run first. Use it to reduce wasted work and focus on what could actually make or break your project.

How this skill works

I extract 5–10 assumptions from your description or conversation, then categorize each as desirability, feasibility, viability, usability, or ethical. Each assumption is scored for impact and uncertainty on a 1–5 scale, placed into a priority matrix, and assigned lightweight validation methods. The output is a clear list of critical, secondary, and safe assumptions with suggested next validation steps.

When to use it

• Starting a new product, feature, or experimental project
• Before committing engineering or design time to a solution
• When you or stakeholders say things like “I think users want…” or “they’ll figure it out”
• When direction feels uncertain or decisions haven’t been validated
• When you need to decide what to test first

Best practices

• Frame assumptions as testable statements (avoid vague claims)
• Extract at least 5 assumptions to cover different risk areas
• Score both impact and uncertainty to reveal true priorities
• Validate high-impact, high-uncertainty items first with fast experiments
• Use quick, low-fidelity tests before deeper studies to save time

Example use cases

• A startup wants to prioritize features before building an MVP
• A product manager hears “users will pay for this” and needs to verify willingness to pay
• A design team is unsure about onboarding flow assumptions and wants usability checks
• An engineering lead needs to test feasibility assumptions before a major architecture choice
• A team preparing a roadmap wants to reduce project risk by validating core hypotheses