Research Project

Emerging Opportunities & Research Backlog Template

A living, interactive backlog form for capturing trend watches, research questions, hypotheses, and experiment ideas — prioritized and structured so teams can review, assign, and spin up pilots.

Interactive Tool

Emerging Opportunities & Research Backlog

Use this form to record promising trends, testable research questions, and experiment ideas in a consistent way. Capture the hypothesis, potential impact, uncertainty, required experiment design, owners, time horizon, and links to related pilots or evidence. Saved entries become part of a living backlog for periodic review and prioritization.

Fill the fields below with enough context that another team member can understand the idea and recommended next step.

A concise name that helps teams scan and find this idea later (5–8 words).
State a clear, testable hypothesis or the research question you want to answer. Example: 'A lightweight AI assistant can reduce time spent on monthly reporting by 30%.'
Where did the idea come from? Customer feedback, internal pain, technology watch, competitor move, etc.? Provide links in the links field if available.
Choose the best qualitative description of impact if this succeeds.
Rate expected benefit from 1 (low) to 5 (very high). Use consistently across backlog for quick sorting.
1.0 10.0
1 = low uncertainty (known tech/workflow), 5 = high uncertainty (new science, regulation, or user behavior).
1.0 10.0
Describe the basic experiment you would run to test the hypothesis (what to build, key metric, success threshold, duration).
List key steps, primary metrics to measure, sample size or scope, and data sources. Keep it actionable so an engineer or researcher can estimate effort.
Concrete criteria that would justify moving from experiment to pilot or from pilot to production (e.g., X% improvement, error rate < Y, N engaged users).
A short estimate to help prioritization — refine after scoping.
Rough order of magnitude for budgeting or triage. Optional.
Who will drive the experiment or be accountable for the next step? Use team name or individual email/ID.
Who needs to be consulted or who would benefit from success?
When would value likely be realized if successful?
Use your organization’s criteria (impact, effort, risk) to set priority. 1 = low, 5 = highest.
1.0 10.0
Choose the status that best reflects where this entry sits in your process.
Select capabilities that are relevant to this idea — helpful for routing to subject-matter experts.
Add URLs to research, prototypes, customer interviews, or related projects. Separate multiple links with line breaks.
Keywords to help search and grouping (e.g., 'customer-support, cost-savings').
A short recommended action to move the idea forward.
Optional — system may populate created date automatically.
Any other context, constraints, or considerations.
Can the owner be contacted for clarification or next-steps?
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