When a private equity firm asked us to deliver a thorough product assessment in three weeks—something that typically takes 4 to 8 weeks—we knew it wouldn’t be easy. But we also knew this: Speed doesn’t have to mean sacrificing quality.
So we got scrappy. We pivoted. We worked weekends and nights. We leaned on experts with a proven track record of building and scaling successful products. And we combined deep expertise with AI-powered tools to deliver actionable insights the firm could trust.
The result? A clear, data-driven report that informed their decision to invest—on time, under pressure and with zero compromise.
The challenge: High stakes, tight deadlines, and shifting expectations
The firm’s goal was simple: Evaluate a product—specifically, a parking management platform—and decide whether it was worth expanding into new markets.
The catch? They needed a robust product profile, a competitor analysis, JTBD journey map and insights on gaps and growth opportunities aligned to their financial thesis. All in three weeks.
Old-school approaches weren’t going to cut it. As Cole Platt, a Test Double principle product manager with 15 years of experience, put it:
“The old-school way of doing this is you get all the user interviews, you synthesize and rationalize manually. We got really scrappy with AI tools to up the ante on the output.”
We couldn’t follow the usual playbook, so we wrote our own.
The approach: Pivot, adapt, deliver
When circumstances changed and user interviews fell through, we understood the constraints, rolled up our sleeves and found another path to success.
We activated our collective expertise: Tapping into professional networks and leveraging internal specialists, we found the credible, hard-to-reach voices our client needed.
Our technical recruiter used her expertise to identify highly specialized experts in the parking industry, and our content manager crafted targeted outreach to connect with them quickly and effectively.
The result: Interviews with industry leaders and the target market—including professionals with 30+ years of experience, keynote conference speakers, authors of white papers, and innovators in parking systems—yielded insights others might have missed.
We used AI tools to accelerate delivery without losing trust: Tools like Fathom transcribed interviews, while NotebookLM summarized conversations, interrogated documents, and mapped customer journeys.
Erik Dahl, our UX consultant with over 20 years of experience and a master’s in Human-Computer Interaction, used AI tools as a support system—while ensuring their accuracy every step of the way:
“I went through two of the interviews and hand-coded them to spot check: Is AI giving me accurate and reliable information that I can trust? Do I get the same thing when I interrogate the interviews myself?” Dahl said.
By letting AI handle the heavy lifting of parsing transcripts, Erik stayed laser-focused on what mattered most: extracting meaningful insights and crafting a story the client could act on.
The result: In just three weeks, we delivered rigorous, actionable insights that gave our client the confidence to make a critical decision—fast.
The result: High-quality insights delivered fast
In just three weeks, we delivered a complete, customized product due diligence assessment that included:
- Comprehensive product profiling: What the product is, where it fits, and what problem it solves
- Growth and adjacency modeling: Features and opportunities to expand into new markets
- Product gap analysis: What’s missing compared to customer needs and competitors
- Platform and capability insights: Strengths and limitations of the product vs. the market
- Competitor analysis: Where the product stands—and how to win
The firm walked away with a clear, actionable view of the product and the confidence to make an informed decision.
Achieving speed and quality when the pressure is on
Delivering high-stakes insights on a tight timeline isn’t about cutting corners—it’s about getting creative:
- Flexibility is everything. When the plan changes, the team needs to pivot fast.
- AI is a powerful productivity tool. Use it to accelerate work, but always validate the results.
- Resilience is the start. Success takes grit, creativity and relentless determination to adapt and deliver against all odds
- Deep expertise makes the difference. Anyone can generate a report. Few can deliver insights you can trust.
As Cole said: “We were able to quickly pivot and make changes, communicate with the partner, and customize a delivery for their business—not for our business.”
Final thoughts
Speed and quality don’t have to be mutually exclusive. When timelines shrink, you need a team that can adapt, innovate, and deliver.
Facing a big decision with a tight deadline? Let's chat about how our product and technical assessments deliver results—quickly and efficiently, without compromising on quality. Schedule your free consultation today.
