This is intended as a living document that is revisited over time as you develop your technology. The technology brief aims to present your assumptions about the technology itself, the problems it solves and benefits it provides to the people who use it. The second section is a customer discover plan and provides a structure to validate (or invalidate as the case may be) your assumptions. The goal is to have a technology brief that is explicit enough to be used to build a test plan that will turn these assumptions into evidence. This is currently presented as a word document, but it can also be captured effectively in a presentation if that is a preferred method.

Part 1: Technology Brief

1. Product/Technology Overview

In a few sentences, describe what is it and how it works at a high level. Write for an intelligent reader outside your field and refrain from using jargon and buzzwords.

2. The Problems

Present the specific problem you are trying to solve. It may address more than one problem and for more than one kind of person and in that case list them all rather than trying to collapse them into one unified pain point.

3. The Users

Describe who you think has this problem and will using your technology. Be as specific about the role these people play rather than an overview of an industry. For example, a quality-control manager in a machine tooling shop and opposed to people in manufacturing.

4. The Buyers

Describe who will controls the budget and/or makes the implementation decisions for your product or technology.

Even if you believe the user and buyer may be the same person, focus on why they would buy the technology versus use it. This is an assumption to be tested.

5. The Benefits

Provide an overview of your technology's value proposition for these users and buyers. These can be framed in both the positive gains and the pain reduction your technology provides to the users. Provide estimates (or guesses) for the scale of the impact (i.e., our system can provide a 10% decrease in production time).

Part 2: Customer Discovery Plan

Using the assumptions that re imbedded in the technology brief, build a plan to go test them. Think about choosing the right people to talk to (not just any expert), knowing what you are trying to extract from each conversation, and recognizing that market viability and product viability are separate questions that both need evidence. The three prompts are here to organize your approach while the discovery tracker is a template for organizing your discovery activities (modify as needed to be most valuable to your efforts). You do not need to populate the spreadsheet for the current assignment but use it over time to track your work.

1. Riskiest Assumptions

List and prioritize the 3-5 assumptions are both most uncertain and most consequential if you're wrong. This list will change over time as you gather more evidence and gain more insight into the markets.

2. Who You'll Talk To

For each assumption, name the specific profile of person who can speak to it. Remember to focus on people doing the work today, with real accountability for the outcome, and ideally outside your existing network. Include both user-side and buyer-side conversations as needed. Over time these will evolve from profiles to specific names of individuals.

3. What You're Listening For

Establish objectives for what are you are trying to learn in discovery. This can include the problem in their words, how they solve this today, goals and how they define success, real constraints (budget, timeline, policy), and what evidence would change the way they operate.

4. Discovery Tracker

Use the table below to connect assumption to who you will talk with, what you will ask them, what they said, and ultimately if it serves to confirm or disconfirm the assumption. In practice each assumption will have multiple data points (multiple interviews).