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Customer Research vs Assumption Based Development

Developers should learn customer research to build user-centric products, reduce development waste by avoiding features users don't need, and improve product-market fit meets developers should use assumption based development when working on projects with high uncertainty, such as new product development, innovative features, or complex systems where requirements are unclear. Here's our take.

🧊Nice Pick

Customer Research

Developers should learn customer research to build user-centric products, reduce development waste by avoiding features users don't need, and improve product-market fit

Customer Research

Nice Pick

Developers should learn customer research to build user-centric products, reduce development waste by avoiding features users don't need, and improve product-market fit

Pros

  • +It's crucial during the discovery phase of a project, when prioritizing features, or when iterating on an existing product based on user feedback
  • +Related to: user-experience-design, product-management

Cons

  • -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Assumption Based Development

Developers should use Assumption Based Development when working on projects with high uncertainty, such as new product development, innovative features, or complex systems where requirements are unclear

Pros

  • +It's particularly valuable in agile and lean environments to prevent wasted effort on invalid assumptions, enabling faster pivots and more reliable delivery
  • +Related to: agile-methodology, lean-software-development

Cons

  • -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

Use Customer Research if: You want it's crucial during the discovery phase of a project, when prioritizing features, or when iterating on an existing product based on user feedback and can live with specific tradeoffs depend on your use case.

Use Assumption Based Development if: You prioritize it's particularly valuable in agile and lean environments to prevent wasted effort on invalid assumptions, enabling faster pivots and more reliable delivery over what Customer Research offers.

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The Bottom Line
Customer Research wins

Developers should learn customer research to build user-centric products, reduce development waste by avoiding features users don't need, and improve product-market fit

Disagree with our pick? nice@nicepick.dev