Assessment is for staying out of trouble

By definition, an assessment story is about some problem that needs to be solved and a semi-magic-tool-based-solution that casts a revealing light onto it. All assessment stories share this structure. Because of this, the audience might get to think that assessment is only for projects that are in big trouble. It then follows that if your project is not in trouble, assessment is not for you.

When I am confronted with this point of view, I usually ask:

Do you test only to get out of trouble, or
do you mainly test to stay out of trouble?

The same holds for assessment. As long as you still need to make decisions that regard and impact the system, you will need some form of assessment.