"Just one more week of research and we'll be ready to decide." And the one week becomes three months and no actual decisions are made. This pattern is the silent killer of product discovery. Here's how you can break free from this trap.

Part 2 of 2. When assumption debates get stuck because it feels like "play money," not real stakes, this combination fixes that: blend David Bland's Assumptions Map with Hias Wrba's Bet-Cost-Matrix and a metaphorical pain scale, and suddenly the debate is about their money, their risk, their skin in the game.

In this 2-part series, I will share two practical ways to enhance your Assumptions Mapping by combining it with two other methods to make assumption prioritisation more concrete and make productive decisions.

A simple table for deciding when an idea needs product discovery and when you should just build it, with real examples for each of the three cases.

Not every feature idea deserves the same scrutiny. How to tell an unproven assumption from an unproven implementation, with two real product examples.

Your team just spent three weeks perfecting the UX of a feature that nobody needs. Meanwhile, your competitor just launched a clunky - or thanks to AI coding an okayish - but valuable solution that's stealing your customers. This scenario plays out daily across product teams worldwide, driven by a dangerous obsession with perfect usability over actual value. It's time for some uncomfortable truths about what actually drives product success.