How many times have you worked on projects where there were less than perfect requirements and a number of assumptions needed to be made? Pretty sure I just saw a bunch of hands go up.

Here are some tips, from Kathy Sierra, author of Creating Passionate Users, on how to deal with assumptions and make sure they don’t fall off the radar:

1) List them.
Yes, that’s a “duh” statement, but seriously… how many times do you actually SEE assumptions explicitly called out?

2) Give them a Sell By date.
Slap a date on these puppies and have a system in place for knowing when to sniff them! Whether its a database or spreadsheet or just a big chart on the wall that y’all agree to review once a month or quarter or whatever, the point is to guarantee that you really WILL sniff them all on a regular basis.

3) Challenge them all the way down.
Question something and then question what it’s based on, and then what that is based on, and so on… until you get to the bottom. And when you hit bottom, keep questioning until you’re absolutely positively sure it’s the bottom.

4) When you challenge an assumption, make it fight for its life.
Put it on trial. Force it to defend itself. Be relentless. Be skeptical. Be brutal.

These are all rather obvious tips, yet so often overlooked. But simply listing and challenging our assumptions on a regular basis isn’t the biggest problem.

The really big problem is the assumptions which are so ingrained that we don’t even know they’re assumptions. They become an accepted Law of Physics, as good as gravity.

Full post here.