Write One Page That Says Who Is Being Tested
ICP Acceptance Specification template
Companion to The Product Manager’s New Job Is Acceptance · Updated 2026-09-30
Use this page before any test. The chapter “Define the ICP Before You Test Anything” explains each field. Keep it to one page and put a version on it.
Copy the table below. If you cannot fill a field, write “unknown.” Do not fill it with a guess.
| Field | Your answer |
|---|---|
| ICP name and version | |
| Inclusion criteria: what a person or account must have to count | |
| Exclusion criteria: what means their results do not count as evidence | |
| Context: the organization or the person’s working situation | |
| Actor map (link to the actor map) | |
| Trigger: the event that starts the search for a solution | |
| Current alternative, including doing nothing | |
| Desired outcome, in the customer’s words | |
| Constraints: budget, time, regulation, data, integration, skills | |
| Evidence held, and how strong it is | |
| Assumptions still unproven |
Fields for an organizational product
Add these if you sell to organizations: organization type, size, and business model; technical environment; workflow maturity; regulatory environment; problem severity and urgency; purchasing authority; implementation capacity; data availability; integration constraints; economic fit.
Fields for a professional or prosumer product
Add these if the customer is a person or a small team: how they work now, what the product has to beat, what it costs them personally, how much switching hurts, and who else has to agree.
Three checks before you use it
- Can you name one kind of customer whose result you would not count? If not, the ICP is too broad.
- Are the buyer, the administrator, and the daily user all described?
- Is at least one assumption listed as unproven? If none, someone is not telling you something.
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- Download the tables as a spreadsheet (CSV)CSV · 576 B