Domain 4 of 6

Testing a Strategy Before Committing

Whether the choices are right. Measuring product market fit and finding the segment where it already exists, naming the assumptions the strategy rests on, deciding under uncertainty that will not resolve, and choosing indicators that move before the revenue does.

4
Concepts
~15%
Of the exam
14
Practice questions
Concepts in this domain
01Product market fitThe first evidence that the choices about where to compete and how to win were right, measured through Sean Ellis's survey question from 2009 and the forty per cent threshold, and why an aggregate score hides the segment where fit already exists.02Strategic assumptionsWriting down the claims a strategy depends upon, separating the load bearing assumptions from the incidental ones, and ranking them by what it would cost to be wrong against what it would cost to find out.03Strategy under uncertaintyThe four levels of residual uncertainty Hugh Courtney, Jane Kirkland and Patrick Viguerie set out in 1997, the three postures available at each level, and the tools that answer where a forecast cannot.04Leading and lagging indicatorsChoosing what to watch once a strategy is committed, why a lagging indicator confirms and a leading indicator warns, and how an indicator built from the assumption it tests makes a number mean something specific.
Try a question from this domain

A charity fundraising product surveys its users and thirty one per cent say they would be very disappointed without it. Splitting the answers shows that fundraising managers at organisations with more than fifty staff give that answer forty seven per cent of the time. What does the result point at?

  • AThe product has not yet found a group that would miss it, so the segment and the promise both need revisiting.
  • BThe overall figure is close enough to forty per cent to justify spending on acquisition across the whole market.
  • CFit exists in a pocket the average is hiding, so the strategy narrows to that segment and measures again inside it.
  • DThe survey holds too few answers to be read, since splitting it has produced a different figure.
14 questions on this domain.

One per page, with a worked explanation.

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