Define the business idea:

Use research to identify your target audience’s pain points and show how your idea will address those points.

Explain how you’ll execute your idea.

Use research to identify your target audience’s pain points and show how your idea will address those points.

Explain how you’ll execute your idea.

Express what your idea will accomplish in the long term. When you begin your proof of concept with a clearly defined idea, your stakeholders or investors can move through the rest of your presentation with ease. Set your performance goals

Once you’ve defined your idea and how you plan to execute it, pinpoint how to monitor and measure your success. Use relevant success metrics to prove feasibility in your target market.  

Our template is similar to the Strategyzer research card (also a wonderful resource!), but it is modified for the specific needs of a PoC test. Here’s a bit more explanation about how to fill in each of the fields: 

• What we want to offer people is:
  Here you will write a line or two summarizing what you want to offer and why it is valuable.
  
  
• Here is how we will simulate that idea:
  Using any and all tools at your disposal, craft whatever it takes to bring said scenario to life and test the hypothesis. You can create basic prototypes in tools like invision, figma, or even canva, google slides, excel, or cardboard and markers (gasp!). It doesn’t need to be a full working prototype. It does have to simulate an idea and its context for potential users in a real-life way.
  
  
• We will test out the reaction by:
  A beta version where you can gather data from users is ideal, but quick and dirty user testing also does the job: get it in front of about 20 people who match the real target for the thing. Plan to ask each person a set of questions for feedback after they have used your product/service.
  
  
• We’ll know it was a success if:
  Here you will want to agree on your most basic metric of success, a baseline indicator or that you will let you know that you have something that appeals to people. Did more than 50% of your testers say they wanted to start using your product? Did more than 80% react positively? Did 40% download your app after seeing your landing page? Any of those might count as success for your test. 

After the test has been run, fill out the second part of the template with your team:

• We learned that:
  Debrief with your team after the test, to summarize what you observed and what you learned. Some lessons will invariably be difficult ones to swallow - the goal here isn’t to get only positive feedback. Your goal is to gauge how much appeal there was around your concept: did people’s eyes light up at the basic idea? Did they get really enthusiastic about it? Did they react to it as a “nice to have”, or “need to have”? Did your hypothesis turn out to be true? For those users who gave negative feedback: Did they pan the idea outright? Did they dislike it’s execution but enjoy the concept? Did they offer suggestions for improvement? All of these are important questions to ask.
  
  
• So therefore we will:
  Summarize a plan of action based on what you have learned. Do you decide to continue and improve on your concept or decide to throw it in the bin? Do you resolve to step back and revise your value proposition? Or, was your value proposition a huge hit with users, and now all you need to do is add some new functionality? All of these are valid options. 

Once you’ve run your proof of concept test, you’ll probably be surprised at the things you’ve learned in such a short period. Don’t worry if the PoC has failed - you will either have learned some expensive lessons very cheaply or have figured out your next move on the path to success.