Reducing risk is why we experiment before we build. It's the learning step in the cycle that helps you create and evaluate solutions that actually have a chance of working. There's nothing that wastes more time or money in a product company than picking the wrong thing to build. First, because you spend all the time on creating and releasing the solution to customers and second because you'll have to remove it or replace it with a solution that actually does the job right.

This guide will help you take the four key product risks, evaluate your solution against them, and identify and address the gaps, all while engaging your team and keeping them aligned.

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When to use it?

• When you’re evaluating features or a product roadmap for risk
• When you want input from other team members on where they see risks
• When you want your team to use and understand the four product risks

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Establishing the four product risks

For the team to successfully evaluate solutions using this technique, you'll need to make sure they understand the four main product risks and which team member is responsible for which risk.

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‍valuable – the customer will buy or choose to use the solution; The Product Manager is responsible for desirability risks.

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‍viable – the solution will work for our business in terms of constraints in marketing, sales, finance, service, legal and compliance. The Product Manager and other business stakeholders are responsible for viability risks.

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feasible – our engineers know how to solve with the time, skills and technology on the team; Technical team members are responsible for feasibility risks.

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‍usable – the user will be able to figure out how to use the solution; Design team members are responsible for usability risks.

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Evaluating Solutions

Now that you've established the product risks and the roles responsible for each, you can start to identify the risks associated with your solutions. Typically, i like to do these at an even higher level, the outcome level, but you'll need an opportunity solution tree to map product outcomes to opportunities and solutions. If you'd like to use an outcome based approach, you can follow this guide: "Accelerating Continuous Discovery Habits with Assumption Testing".

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If you're going to simply look at solutions, that will work too. If you don't have solutions created you can check out either of the following guides to help you start developing solutions: 

• Innovation brainstorming 1 - Level Up
• The Design Sprint is still king

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You can also follow along using the MIRO board for this guide.

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I'll use a Recycled Fish Tank Ecommerce Store as an example product.
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‍Product: Recycled Fish Tank Ecommerce Store
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Product Outcome: Improve customer activation during their initial experience.

Potential Solutions:

1. Solution 1: Offer free, personalized consultation sessions for first-time fish tank owners to guide them through the setup process.
2. Solution 2: Create and distribute step-by-step setup guides, including videos and written instructions, tailored to different tank types.
3. Solution 3: Develop a starter kit for first-time users, including all necessary components and a simple setup manual.

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Step 1: 

Place your product features or ideas you want to evaluate in the top bubbles for each team member

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Step 2: 

Assign the feasibility board to technical team members

Assign the usability board to design team members

Assign viability board to business or product team members

Assign the desirability board to product team members

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Step 3: 

Ask each team member to complete their own risk evaluation board using a simple score of Low, Medium, and High and to write simple explanations of why they gave the feature that score.

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Step 4: 

Assign 10-15 minutes for the team to complete their board and make sure that team members work independently and in silence.

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Step 5: 

Once they’ve completed their individual boards, pull all of the inputs together an look at the board as a team.

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Step 6: 

Dive into the individual risks, ask each other person or team about their scores independently. Do not allow other team members to jump in right away.

Step 7: 

After hearing all four points of view, you should be able to identify what the gap or concern is and you can capture it. Perhaps it’s just because the engineers don’t know enough about a particular solution, or it uses a piece of technology that is not commonly used or that no team member has experience with (This is a common issue when feasibility risk is high). Each gap identified may have a different way to solve for it. Here are some common ways to address gaps across the different types of risks.

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Ways to address Feasibility Risks: 

• Research Spike
• Proof of Concept
• Technology Comparison Matrix

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Ways to address Viability Risks: 

• Business Strategy Alignment
• Financial Assessment
• Product Marketing and Branding
• Legal and Compliance Checks
• Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Stakeholder Interviews
• Pilot Programs
• Scalability Assessment
• Compliance Checks

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Ways to address Usability Risks: 

• Usability Testing
• Error Rate Analysis
• Collaborate with UX Team
• Set Clear Usability Goals
• Regular Usability Tests
• Hybrid and Remote User Testing
• UX Team Expertise Utilization
• User Testing Sessions Observation
• Continuous User Feedback Mechanisms

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Ways to address Desirability Risks: 

• Customer Interviews
• Observation
• Market and Competition Analysis
• Review Mining
• Utilizing Online Sources
• Focus Groups
• Beta Testing

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Congrats! Now: 

1. Your team has a common understanding of the risks
2. You identified the specific gaps underlying the risks
3. You can prioritize those specific gaps
4. You can take action to resolve those specific gaps using relevant techniques and experiments

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Remember, we can never get to zero risk, but by reducing it, we come closer to making sure our solutions are successful for our users.