TOOL RISKIEST ASSUMPTION CANVAS

In your stack of assumptions, the riskiest one is the first gate. If when testing this assumption it continually comes back as “false,” you don’t get to pass go, you don’t get to collect your $200. This tool will help you rank your assumptions before moving on to experimentation.

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define riskiest assumptions

± 15–30 MIN

session

3–5

people per group

FINDING THE RISKIEST ASSUMPTION

Finding the riskiest assumption is not always easy. Discussing assumptions with your team will help to identify the ones to go after. Do this visually so it’s to the point and provides you with the outcome you need!

JENGA

Jenga is a game where players in turn try to remove blocks from a wooden tower. Each block that’s pulled out may make the tower collapse, but the blocks on the bottom are critical to keeping the tower upright.

Think of your idea as a big Jenga tower, where all of the bricks are assumptions. When one of the assumptions on the bottom of the stack is invalidated and the brick is removed, the entire tower may fall. When you remove one from the top, not much will happen.

We need to make sure that the base of the tower is safe. We need to start at the bottom, with what we call the riskiest assumptions. At the moment, all the other assumptions are not as important.

After all, if the riskiest assumption is incorrect, it may be totally irrelevant to think about any of the others: maybe your idea needs to change completely in the light of the new knowledge!

To find your riskiest assumption, go over your Business Model Canvas, value proposition, design criteria, and the other things you have already learned.

What are your assumptions? What are the things you’re not sure about? Use this template to map them on a wall with your team as a Jenga tower. The ones that absolutely must be true for your idea to work go on the bottom of the stack. The ones that are less important or depend on other assumptions go higher up.

TRY TO FAIL

The goal is to try to make the tower fail fast! So pick the bottom-most assumption, which is the riskiest one. That’s what you’ll want to know more about. If it is right, you can move to the next riskiest assumption. But if it fails, your Jenga tower falls, and you’ll need to go back to the drawing board to find another approach that works better.