Last week I wrote about discovery debt - the cost of skipping the hard work of learning. Today I reminded myself what the opposite felt like.
When you map assumptions, you're doing something simple but deeply uncomfortable: forcing yourself to write down the things you've been taking for granted.
Most assumptions surface as debates, strong opinions or "must have" features that sound obvious but can't actually be proven. Put them on a wall & suddenly you see them for what they are → guesses.
That's where the work begins. Asking two blunt questions: how confident are we? and what happens if we're wrong? The riskiest assumptions are almost always the ones nobody wants to touch. The ones that, if wrong, make everything else pointless.
And here's the paradox → mapping them feels like slowing down. But once they're on the table, you know exactly where to start. You can choose what to test, what to ignore & what to bet on.
And those low-risk assumptions? Forget them. Skipping over them isn't cutting corners, it's about focusing on what really matters. Push ahead & if they turn out to be wrong, no harm done.
The simplest way I've found to start is with one line → "For this to work, the following things need to be true..." Write every answer down. Suddenly you're not trading opinions - you're exposing risks you can test.
The real value is the clarity it brings. Strong discovery means being explicit about what you want to find out & rigorous in how you go about finding it out. That clarity compounds - because when the learning comes back into the team, it spreads. You cross-pollinate. You share quotes, stories, the voice of the customer. And suddenly, everyone's making decisions from the same base of evidence, not their scattered opinions.
That's what creates forward momentum - even when everything feels uncertain.
