Will your development team be able to create a great product?

Reading the book The Silicon Valley Way by Elton Sherwin. I came across an interesting test that will surely help startups to find weak spots and white spots in their future products.

For each question, put the following points:

• No and I do not plan - 0
• No, but I plan - 4
• True fifty percent - 5
• Right at eighty percent - 8
• Yes, that's right - 10

So, let's go:

1. Product description in one sentence
   Can you and your development team describe the product in accessible expressions?
2. Intended consumer
   Can you and your development team identify the intended consumer?
3. Background and operating environment
   Are the necessary conditions and operating environment of the consumer?
4. Production targets
   Are production goals written in accessible language on one sheet?
5. Schemes and drawings
   Does a product outline and scheme of its work exist?
6. Competitor Information
   Are all the features of competitive products recorded along with the characteristics of your products?
7. Production experience
   Do developers use your and competitive product daily?
8. Action plan
   Is there a plan of action on one sheet with three to ten major steps?
9. Target price
   Will the developers create an affordable product?
10. The ability to fast and flexible reproduction
    Are you going to use an iterative production process?
11. Marketing and Development Agreement
    Have developers and vendors defined project goals?

Results:
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Over 100 - too good to be true
90 - 100 - the future winner
80 - 89 - a good start
Less than 80 - requires further work; too much risk if you have three months left

About the author: Elton Sherwin is an investor and managing director of Ridgewood Capital in Palo Alto. Before joining the Ridgewood team, he managed the Motorola ventures office.