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Product Owner / Product Manager

The backlog is ordered. Is every item a hypothesis?

How Value Erosion shows up for you

A Product Owner feels Value Erosion as a backlog that grows by request instead of by evidence. Items are ordered by who asked loudest, acceptance criteria describe behavior but not the metric it should move, and finished work is never checked against the reason it was prioritized. The backlog becomes a list of opinions rather than a portfolio of bets.

Three questions to ask before building

  1. 1

    For the top five backlog items, what is the hypothesis, the metric and the expected size of the change?

  2. 2

    Which item would we stop building if we learned it will not move its metric?

  3. 3

    How long after release will we look at the result, and who will do it?

The first 15 minutes

Turn your top backlog item into an impact hypothesis

  1. Take the item at the top of the backlog.
  2. Write: "We believe that by implementing [item], we will achieve [outcome], which will move [metric] in [time]."
  3. Add the metric and the date you will check it to the item, so it is part of the definition of done.

Start here

Run the diagnostic

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Prompts for your role

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Claude skills

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Templates

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Work it through with the Assistant

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