Validation 1
What is validation?
Validation is the process of gathering evidence and verifying whether an idea for a product or feature meets the desired objectives and fulfils users’ needs.
The closer you get to being right the first time, the less developer resources you waste and the faster you achieve your business outcome.
Validation 2:
Questions to consider in the Validate phase:
- What outcomes are resonating most with customers?
- How can we best solve for our customers’ pain?
- What don’t we know about customers’ workflows that may help in building the solution?
- How do we curate a diverse set of customers for interviews
- What pain is so deep that customers would pay for a solution?
Validation 3:
Why is validation crucial to effective product development ?
- Helps you prioritise which solutions to build
- Helps teams invest resources in the right areas of the product
- Helps you better manage stakeholders
Validate 4:
How to validate your product ideas?
One of the best ways is to get first-hand feedback from users. But this can be very time-consuming so supplement using:
Product usage data: get granular insights - understanding which feature
Validate 5:
The role of experimentation and testing.
The Validate Phase is important prior to going into the build phase. Are we solving the problem we were aiming to solve?
Evaluative testing & Live experimentation are two key approaches.
Validate 6:
Evaluative testing:
- Happens up front before building anything (e.g. prototypes or usability testing for multiple feature ideas)
- Fake door test: Invite customers to use a feature that hasn’t been released yet to gauge customer interest
Validate 7:
Live experimentation:
Release things into the product to see how they work in production
Can make features available to a subset of customers to test before going into a deeper build
A/B test: Putting out two versions of a feature and seeing which performs better
Validate 8:
Three best practices to consider in the Validate Phase:
- Consider what experiment is best for our learning and testing. What information do we need?
- Target the right users! The solution to be tested may only be relevant for a subset of customers.
- Use data to evaluate success. Monitor our metrics to see if we are impacting.
Validate 9:
What happens if the solution tested is not working well enough or has low customer interest?
This is perfectly normal in the product management lifecycle and may mean going back to discovery, and that is okay! We need to stay nimble.
Validate 10:
Exercise: Validating a product idea with data. Step 1: Think through which data sources you can leverage. Can we track product usage? Do we have….?
- A way to measure product usage (insights dashboards provide a way - we should review these)
- A way to create in-app surveys and polls (GripAble do not have this functionality in the app yet).
- Access to a feedback management system (GripAble have SF feedback from customers and our ongoing customer interviews and insights dashboards)
- Resources like market research and a willingness to pay surveys
Validate 11:
Step 2: Determine if you need to do evaluative testing or live experimentation
Evaluative testing
* Are we testing a feature’s usability?
* Do we have a prototype?
* Do we need to do a fake door test?
Live experimentaiton
* Do you need to test out a single feature or A/B test with two versions?
* Where in the product do you want the experiment to live?
VAlidate 12:
Step 3: For both categories of experimentation what must you do?
Identify the users you want to target.
Are they a subgroup of your overall custoemrs?
