Conducting a Technical Progress Assessment 📋

This lesson teaches innovators how to conduct a Technical Progress Assessment to evaluate the technical feasibility of their solution, identify unresolved challenges, and determine support needs, helping them stay focused on delivering a viable MVP.

Overview:

Imagine you’re building a drone that delivers hot coffee—a perfect combo, right? But your boss asks, “What’s the status of the tech challenges?” Uh-oh! You realize you haven’t fully evaluated the technical hurdles, like keeping coffee hot mid-flight or navigating around power lines.

By conducting a Technical Progress Assessment, you list out all the solved and unsolved issues, like heat retention and reliable navigation. You identify a need for specialized sensors and heat-proof materials, and now you have a clear plan to tackle each challenge. With this approach, you stay on track to deliver an MVP that shows your drone can handle the basics, without wasting resources on unsolved barriers. ☕🛸

Key Concepts Covered:

• Assessing Technical Challenges: Identifying and evaluating both solved and unsolved technical issues critical to the project’s success.
• Technical Barrier Identification: Recognizing potential obstacles that could delay or derail development, along with strategies to address them.
• Resource and Support Planning: Determining the expertise, tools, and resources needed to overcome technical barriers effectively.
• MVP-Focused Development: Prioritizing technical solutions and decisions that enable delivery of a functional MVP to validate the concept with minimal investment.
• Iterative Problem Solving: Employing an adaptive mindset to iteratively address technical challenges and learn from each solution stage.

Want to learn more?:

Check out these resources!

• “Strategies to Test Your Minimum Viable Product” by Turing.com – This resource provides insights into MVP testing strategies, including technical viability and user response. It focuses on identifying MVP readiness through rapid testing and iterating based on user feedback. Although technical in focus, it balances with practical examples to show how startups can assess whether their product meets MVP standards
• “How to Conduct a Feasibility Study” by LogRocket –  

  This guide provides a template and examples for assessing the feasibility of product ideas, focusing on elements like technical viability, market research, risk analysis, and ROI calculation. It’s ideal for companies aiming to validate innovative features or products, guiding them through each stage from defining the scope to evaluating potential market and operational risks .

About the instructor: 

Nick Chagin brings a unique blend of intrapreneurial education and operational wherewithal to the Productable Success Team to help users both understand how to use the software and the methodology.

Prior to joining Productable, Nick facilitated entrepreneurship education programs for over 2000+ young aspiring entrepreneurs across 16 different countries, working with over 50 American and international universities and 11 U.S. Embassies spanning five continents. He led international partnership development, connecting bridges between entrepreneurially ecosystems. He developed high-level U.S. Department of State programs for initiatives like the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative (YLAI) and Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) while facilitating corporate innovation workshops for organizations like Dell.

He volunteers on the Board of Advisors for the ENACTUS social entrepreneurship club at the University of Illinois and teaches high school entrepreneurship programs with TiE Young Entrepreneurs Foundation.