Hypothesis Writing: Using Hypotheses to Align Design, Business and Technology

Sold out

This half-day workshop is a deep-dive into the key method used to manage design in an agile context — the hypothesis.

No one admits it but too often, requirements are just guesses. To cover up this uncomfortable fact, software managers do a vast amount to work on requirements: they pre-plan in painstaking detail, outlining every possible scenario, use case, back-end integration point, and business rule. The end result of all this planning? Too often, it’s disappointment, frustration, and vast sums of wasted money.

Instead of all this guessing, shouldn't we just call requirements what they are--hypotheses--and work as quickly as we can to figure out if we're right it wrong?

In the last two years, Josh Seiden and Jeff Gothelf have been working with software teams to do exactly this. Working closely together in small, cross-functional groups, these Agile teams use Lean UX methods to take risk out of the software development process by validating requirements in an ongoing way as they are designing and building software. The key technique they use here is the hypothesis.

This workshop will be a half-day deep dive into using hypotheses to manage your design process. It will cover the following topics:

• Identifying assumptions, why this is so important, and how to do it.
• The assumptions canvas—your key tool for managing assumptions—and connecting your work to business strategy.
• Translating assumptions into hypotheses.
• How to write good hypotheses for software teams.
• Testing hypotheses: how do hypotheses, experiments, and MVP’s (minimum viable products) work together
• Putting it all together in an agile rhythm.

Using a mix of lecture, hands-on exercises, and discussion, this is a fast-paced, practical workshop. You’ll leave with hands-on experience with a method you can apply immediately in your work.