Assume Nothing

The prime directive of product discovery is to never assume anything.

While I try to live by my own product principles, my main rule is to assume nothing. To assume nothing forces product managers to work from first principles. If you can stick to what you are certain of and derive everything else, you can expect to be wrong far less often than when you assume whatever you please. Since that can be tiresome, make sure any assumptions you do list are backed by customer research and data.

Listing assumptions backed by numbers does not exempt a product manager from revisiting and revising said assumptions regularly. We all work with imperfect information, so even assumptions derived from customer insights will contain errors. And that is perfectly OK. What is not acceptable is that unverified assumptions become the gospel.

Do not assume you understand the customer pain points and needs. Do not assume you have the right solutions to presumed problems. Best be sure, lest you become weapons-grade moronium.

Beyond product: people

The prime directive also applies to dealing with people, not merely products. Disorder is the natural state of things. Order, including the spontaneous kind (i.e. self-organization), only arises when external energy is available and constituents (particles or people) can interact. Just ask your local physicist.

Organizations are the same: achieving and maintaining any form of order requires effort. Without such effort, chaos ensues.

To get any form of agreement (or ‘alignment’ in business-speak) requires people to understand a proposal and, well, agree on it. That does not magically happen. If you assume nothing, you do not expect agreement unless you have explicitly received it. Do not assume a thumbs up in Slack counts as agreement either: it can mean different things to different people, from “I’ve seen it (but not read it)” to “This is the best idea since sliced bread!”

And if you assume nothing, you do not expect to have agreement tomorrow, even if you have it today. Because circumstances change. And people change their minds.

To assume nothing means to expect that nothing will happen of its own accord if it requires any effort by anyone at all. You must make it happen. Because if you don’t, who will?