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Okay, so chapter 2 is short but sweet. It runs through creating a list of foundational questions you want to answer about your bullseye customer and the product you are building for them.
The one caveat about this book I will feel guilty about is that all this research should be done as a team (it explicitly says it multiple times throughout the book)! For example, coming up with this list of questions should be done as a group with debating, conversations, and group prioritization. This way you are leveraging the knowledge and expertise of everyone.
Since this is a side project for me, I am sadly going at this alone. I know it’s not ideal but this is all for fun and learning!
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After running through this exercise, I've compiled a list of key questions, organized by category, without prioritizing them. As a reminder, my product idea is an automated tool for setting up application environments and infrastructure.
| Key Questions | category |
|---|---|
| How long does it take a user to setup their ideal infrastructure? | would increase confidence |
| What parts of the surrounding infrastructure is important? Is it CI/CD, github repo, cloud platform, etc etc? | would increase confidence |
| How often do users create a new application? | keeps me up at night |
| Is setting up a cloud platform and CI/CD pipeline a task that has a lot of friction to it? | must be true for adoption |
| Would users prefer an open-ended solution that lets them choose various components be better than an opinionated one? | disappointing metric |
| Is there a preference for automated infra vs set things up by hand? | must be true for adoption |
| Is setting up deployment infrastructure an after thought once something is built? | disappointing metric |
| Does the user see value in the confidence of tests and CI/CD pipelines | hypothesis about ideal customer |
| Does the customer maintain a healthy test suite? | hypothesis about ideal customer |
| Does the customer always deploy code they write | would increase confidence |
| What tools are useful to the user? | hypothesis about ideal customer |
| Does the user care about code quality? | hypothesis about ideal customer |
| Does the user want pre-configured packages like testing libraries, authentication, telemetry? | hypothesis about ideal customer |
| Does the user see value in having a tool to help them run package upgrades? | hypothesis about ideal customer |
As you can tell, these questions are kinda all over the place. There are a lot of questions that fall into the category of “hypothesis about ideal customer.” I think this is normal because we haven’t done any framing or talked to customers yet! I have a rough idea of who I think my bullseye customer are but again, without actually defining who they are and more importantly talking to them, I’m really just guessing.
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The next step is to prioritize the questions. Again, Learn More Faster provides a handful of prompts to help identify the highest priorities in order to derisk and not waste time, energy, and money when it comes to the bullseye customer sprint.
<aside> 🦖
Here’s a list of my key questions with their priorities and some notes on why I think they should be prioritized as such.
| Key Questions | category | Priority | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is setting up a cloud platform and CI/CD pipeline a task that has a lot of friction to it? | must be true for adoption | HIGH | The main pain point that our hypothesis solves for |
| Is there a preference for automated infra vs set things up by hand? | must be true for adoption | HIGH | If true, would validate our hypothesis |
| How long does it take a user to setup their ideal infrastructure? | would increase confidence | HIGH | A driving metric that we need to know for our solution |
| Does the user see value in the confidence of tests and CI/CD pipelines | hypothesis about ideal customer | HIGH | Validating the solution we have in mind |
| Is setting up deployment infrastructure an after thought once something is built? | disappointing metric | HIGH | Knowing this would alter our approach and how we tackle problem |
| What parts of the surrounding infrastructure is important? Is it Ci/CD, github repo, cloud platform, etc etc? | would increase confidence | MED | Would impact product roadmap |
| How often do users create a new application? | keeps me up at night | MED | Would impact value of product |
| Does the user want pre-configured packages like testing libraries, authentication, telemetry? | hypothesis about ideal customer | MED | Would impact product roadmap |
| Does the user see value in having a tool to help them run package upgrades? | hypothesis about ideal customer | MED/LOW | Would impact product roadmap |
| Would users prefer an open-ended solution that lets them choose various components be better than an opinionated one? | disappointing metric | LOW | Nice to know |
| Does the customer maintain a healthy test suite? | hypothesis about ideal customer | LOW | Nice to know |
| Does the customer always deploy code they write | would increase confidence | LOW | Nice to know |
| What tools are useful to the user? | hypothesis about ideal customer | LOW | Nice to know |
| Does the user care about code quality? | hypothesis about ideal customer | LOW | Nice to know |
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