Critical Assumption Planning - Test Program Design

Test Program Design

The assumptions need to be tested. Sometimes good market research is enough, other times a working prototype needs to be developed. The order in which the assumptions are tested is critical in terms of the money spent on testing. One of the major focuses of the CAP method is to maximize the learning per unit expenditure on testing.

In order to determine the best testing option the test Effectiveness ratio (e) is calculated for one or more assumptions based on the estimated Costs (C), Time spend on testing (T) and the estimated reduction (R) between the NPV values of the assumptions (P as a percentage of the NPV range). Using these parameters, the effectiveness ratio (e) is calculated:


e = \frac{\sum (PR)}{CT}


Once the best testing option is chosen from the different test effectiveness values, the organisation can finish the planning of the test.

Read more about this topic:  Critical Assumption Planning

Famous quotes containing the words test, program and/or design:

    If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.
    Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)

    The principal saloon was the Howlin’ Wilderness, an immense log cabin with a log fire always burning in the huge fireplace, where so many fights broke out that the common saying was, “We will have a man for breakfast tomorrow.”
    —For the State of California, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)