Diagnostic Tool

The Adoptability Test

Five questions designed to predict commercial outcome before a product is built. It is the first of three tools in the framework — the other two are the Captured Value Audit and the Adoptability Canvas.

The five questions

Q1 — The Change Count

If someone wanted to use this today, how many people and processes would need to change first?

Q2 — The Economic Buyer

Has the economic buyer — the person with actual authority to sign and commit budget — been identified and engaged directly?

Q3 — The Measured Metric

Does the value this product creates translate to a metric the institution actually measures and rewards?

Q4 — The Budget Classification

Is this product CAPEX or OPEX in the target institution's accounting framework — and does that classification fit how the institution actually budgets?

Q5 — The Design Timing

Have adoptability requirements been designed into the product from the start, or will they be discovered only after regulatory or technical approval?

Why these five questions

Each question targets a different point where the adoption equation typically fails: structural complexity (Q1), decision-network gaps (Q2), value misalignment (Q3), financial-architecture mismatch (Q4), and design sequencing (Q5). A product that cannot be answered clearly on all five carries adoptability risk that will surface during commercial launch — usually at a cost far higher than addressing it during design.

Related tools

Captured Value Audit: Four questions that reveal where value fails to land within the system — used post-launch or during commercial diagnosis.
Adoptability Canvas: A six-section workshop tool for mapping a system's Wall before a product is built.