On the discipline of testing assumptions before building products. Why patience and validation beat speed every time.
The Temptation to Build
Every product person has felt it — that irresistible urge to start building the moment an idea takes shape. The wireframes practically draw themselves. The architecture crystallizes in your mind. You can see the finished product so clearly that building it feels like a formality.
This is the most dangerous moment in product development.
What Testing Really Means
Testing assumptions isn't about running surveys or building MVPs. It's about finding the fastest way to be wrong. The goal is to identify the riskiest assumption in your plan and design the cheapest possible experiment to validate or kill it.
The discipline is in what you don't build. Every feature you ship before validating the core assumption is waste. Every line of code written before talking to customers is a liability.