Hypothesis Driven 80/20
Use $ARGUMENTS as initial context.
When to use this skill
- Ambiguous problems that need fast direction before full analysis.
- Prioritizing limited team capacity across competing hypotheses.
- Designing a test plan with clear stop or continue criteria.
- Converting broad strategic questions into measurable experiments.
Required inputs
- Governing business question and target metric.
- Time horizon and decision deadline.
- Data constraints and available analysis bandwidth.
Workflow
- Define one decision question and explicit success metric.
- Generate 3-7 falsifiable hypotheses using strict format.
- For each hypothesis define expected signal, disconfirming signal, and kill threshold.
- Score hypotheses with 80/20 lens: impact, confidence, effort, speed.
- Select top 1-2 hypotheses for minimum viable tests.
- Build workplan with owners, deadlines, and decision checkpoints.
Ask-first questions
Ask up to 3 questions before ranking hypotheses:
- Which single metric determines decision success?
- What is the latest acceptable date for a go or no-go decision?
- Which datasets are trusted and immediately accessible?
Assumption policy
- If critical data is unavailable, proceed with transparent assumptions.
- Annotate each assumption with confidence and validation action.
- Avoid merged hypotheses; keep one causal chain per hypothesis.
Output contract
Always produce these sections in order:
- Context
- Decision or Recommendation
- Analysis
- Risks
- Next Actions
- Assumptions
Guardrails
- Hypotheses must follow: "If X, then Y, because Z.".
- Avoid descriptive statements that cannot be disproven.
- Include both confirming and disconfirming signals.
- Stop low-value analysis once kill threshold is reached.
Resources
references/hypothesis-design.md- Falsifiability rules and signal design.references/80-20-prioritization.md- Scoring and sequencing framework.templates/hypothesis-plan.md- Decision-ready hypothesis template.examples/hypothesis-example.md- Golden example with incomplete inputs.
Keywords
hypothesis driven, 80/20, falsifiable hypothesis, prioritization, test plan, consulting