How to Use the Identify-Assumptions Skill for Risk Assessment with an Impact × Risk Matrix

The identify-assumptions skill extracts risky assumptions from product descriptions and feeds them into the prioritize-assumptions skill, which maps each item on an Impact × Risk matrix to surface "leap-of-faith" assumptions requiring immediate validation.

The phuryn/pm-skills repository provides structured markdown-based skills for product discovery workflows. The identify-assumptions skill analyzes product ideas from multiple stakeholder perspectives, generating structured outputs that the prioritize-assumptions skill converts into an Impact × Risk matrix for strategic decision-making.

Understanding the Identify-Assumptions Skill

The repository provides two variants of the skill located in pm-product-discovery/skills/. Both analyze ideas from Product Manager, Designer, and Engineer viewpoints, but differ in scope:

identify-assumptions-existing (pm-product-discovery/skills/identify-assumptions-existing/SKILL.md)

• Targets features added to existing products
• Categories: Value, Usability, Viability, Feasibility

identify-assumptions-new (pm-product-discovery/skills/identify-assumptions-new/SKILL.md)

• Targets new product ideas
• Extended categories: Value, Usability, Viability, Feasibility, plus Ethics, Go-to-Market, Strategy & Objectives, and Team

Each assumption output includes a rationale, potential failure mode, and initial confidence level, creating the input required for quantitative risk scoring.

How the Impact × Risk Matrix Works

The prioritize-assumptions skill (pm-product-discovery/skills/prioritize-assumptions/SKILL.md) receives the assumption list and calculates two scores:

• Impact = Opportunity Score × Number of Customers (where Opportunity Score = Importance × (1 − Satisfaction))
• Risk = (1 − Confidence) × Effort

The skill then classifies assumptions into four quadrants:

Quadrant	Interpretation	Action
Low Impact / Low Risk	Minimal value, low uncertainty	Defer
High Impact / Low Risk	High value, proven feasibility	Implement
Low Impact / High Risk	Low value, high uncertainty	Reject
High Impact / High Risk	Leap-of-faith	Design experiment

As implemented in the source code, items landing in the High Impact / High Risk quadrant trigger the brainstorm-experiments-new step to design cheap validation tests.

Practical Implementation Examples

Evaluating Existing Features

Use the existing product skill when refining current functionality:

/identify-assumptions-existing
Feature: Inline comment threading for our project-management SaaS
Context: Users often lose context when replying to older comments.

The skill returns a structured table:

Assumption	Category	What could go wrong?	Confidence
Users will adopt the new UI without training	Usability	Learning curve too steep	Medium
The backend can handle real-time updates for 10k concurrent users	Feasibility	Scaling bottleneck	Low

Assessing New Product Opportunities

For new initiatives, use the extended categories:

/identify-assumptions-new
Product: AI-powered writing assistant for non-native speakers
Goal: Reduce grammar errors by 30% in the first month.

This includes additional risk categories such as Ethics (user trust in AI) and Go-to-Market (acquisition channels), as defined in lines 37-40 of the skill file.

Running the Complete Discovery Pipeline

The /discover command (pm-product-discovery/commands/discover.md) orchestrates the full workflow:

/discover AI writing assistant for non-native speakers

This executes the chain: brainstorm → identify-assumptions-new → prioritize-assumptions → brainstorm-experiments.

The prioritize-assumptions step produces the Impact × Risk matrix:

| # | Assumption | Category | Impact | Risk | Quadrant |

|---|------------|----------|--------|------|----------| | 1 | Users will trust AI suggestions | Ethics | 8 | 2 | High Impact / Low Risk | | 2 | We can train a model with <5k sentences | Feasibility | 7 | 7 | High Impact / High Risk |

Assumption 2 surfaces as a leap-of-faith item, prompting immediate experiment design rather than implementation.

Summary

• The identify-assumptions skill in phuryn/pm-skills provides structured risk extraction from product descriptions, available in identify-assumptions-existing and identify-assumptions-new variants.
• Impact scores derive from the ICE model (Opportunity Score × Customer count), while Risk scores calculate uncertainty multiplied by effort.
• The prioritize-assumptions skill maps assumptions to a 2×2 matrix, highlighting High Impact / High Risk "leap-of-faith" assumptions requiring validation.
• The /discover command automates the full pipeline from assumption identification to experiment generation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between identify-assumptions-existing and identify-assumptions-new?

The existing variant (pm-product-discovery/skills/identify-assumptions-existing/SKILL.md) analyzes features for current products across four categories: Value, Usability, Viability, and Feasibility. The new variant (pm-product-discovery/skills/identify-assumptions-new/SKILL.md) extends this to eight categories for greenfield products, adding Ethics, Go-to-Market, Strategy & Objectives, and Team risk considerations.

How does the prioritize-assumptions skill calculate Impact and Risk scores?

According to the skill file (pm-product-discovery/skills/prioritize-assumptions/SKILL.md), Impact equals Opportunity Score multiplied by the number of customers affected, where Opportunity Score derives from Importance × (1 − Satisfaction). Risk equals (1 − Confidence) multiplied by Effort, producing a normalized score for matrix placement.

What constitutes a "leap-of-faith" assumption in the matrix?

Leap-of-faith assumptions occupy the High Impact / High Risk quadrant. These represent critical hypotheses with massive potential value but high uncertainty that could sink the product if wrong. The matrix flags these for immediate experimental validation before committing engineering resources.

Can I use the identify-assumptions skill without the full discovery command?

Yes. Both skills function as standalone markdown plugins. You can invoke /identify-assumptions-existing or /identify-assumptions-new directly for focused risk-assessment sessions without triggering the complete /discover pipeline, though you will need to manually pass outputs to /prioritize-assumptions to generate the Impact × Risk matrix.

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