The Javelin Experiment Board is a tool to validate ideas through experimentation. It is easy to understand, gets you started quickly, it is fun, engaging and helps you focus fail fast to succeed faster.

It is a visual board that helps you turn your ideas into experiments by:

  • Defining hypothesis – Customer, Problem and Solution
  • Identifying the riskiest assumptions to test –  ones critical to the viability of the business and least amount of data available
  • Define experimentation methods and success criteria (i.e. Interview, Pre-sell, Concierge)
  • Get out of the building and collect data
  • Analyse results and learn – Focus on key learnings that will drive your next experiment
  • Take decision to pivot or persevere
    • Pivot, if results do not meet success criteria -> change customer or problem hypothesis
    • Persevere, if your results met or exceeded success criteria -> brainstorm more risky assumptions and define more experiments

Javelin Experiment Board explained

Let’s get started!

Remember to start on the left hand side – Brainstorming Area

  • Customer – Start with listing customer segments – love somebody more than anyone else
    • Each team member write down one customer (5 mins)
    • Select one customer segment to focus test on -> move to right hand side – Execute Area
  • Problem – each team member write down one problem (5 mins) – select one problem and move to Execute Area
  • Solution – focus first on understanding & validating customer and problem before going into solution – because

Every customer has a problem

Every problem has a solution

Not every solution has a problem

Not every problem has a customer

Applying the theory – when you have a business idea

The Javelin Experiment board and the Business Model Canvas (BMC) are complementary in that after analysing the results from the experiments, the leanings can feed back into the BMC and help you take identify new risky assumption to test.

  • Apply Business Model Canvas  – use to describe idea
  • Apply Javelin Experiment Board – use to test idea
  • Work in team / get a mentor
  • Be willing to fail and learn
  • Discuss with others!
  • Workshops – BIGJUMP