Early and often
Recently we were asked a question that gets to the heart of one of the biggest barriers to making new things: why don’t we wait until a product is fully ready before we launch it?
The short answer is that it cannot be ready until you launch it.
We launch early to gather insights early, which in turn helps us avoid wasted effort. It also ensures that we make the right thing for the people we are serving, deciding based on evidence and insight, not assumptions and ideas.
The longer answer is maybe best given using our EnquiryDesk module as an example.
We think that there are essentially two stages involved in moving from proposition to product (and obviously a whole lot more before you even get to the proposition stage). First, you must make sure that you are making the right thing. Then, you must make sure that you are making it the right way.
EnquiryDesk: Are we making the right thing?
We started our journey with EnquiryDesk knowing that there was some value in helping staff manage enquiries. We had a rough idea of what a tool could look like, but we didn’t know whether it would provide value to our members, or how it would fit among their existing workflows.
Rather than scoping everything out in fine detail, we started by testing early with clickable, non-functioning prototypes, just enough to give a sense of the concept.
We followed this with rapid testing of multiple iterations of the prototypes. This took us from a tool that sits closely-knit with case management, asking people to manually enter enquiries, to something which sits closer to the client, and oriented more toward front-line communications with them.
By testing our proposition early and often, we were able to quickly confirm with minimal effort who our target users were, then co-design with them. Most importantly, this allowed us to validate with evidence a proposition that they would not only use but would find real value in while helping the Network achieve our broader strategic objectives.
That’s when we knew we were making the right thing.
Are we making it the right way?
The first version we put to users was very stripped back, but it did the job — it was an MVP: a minimum viable product. We provided users with very little guidance about how to use it because we wanted to learn from how they wanted to use it.
When we gave that version to our members, our roadmap had a huge list of features but, without any evidence that people wanted or needed them, they amounted to little more than an unsorted wish list.
Since then, the piloting process allowed us to sort through those wishes, and so:
- Many features were relegated to the “maybe one day if anyone asks for it” pile
- Some features were simply removed as we learned they were not needed
- A handful of features are planned for release, now that we have gathered evidence supporting them as multiple users have asked for them
The vast majority of features were simply unforeseen in our roadmap or plans. Instead, they came directly from real people using the tool and how they’ve told us they wanted it to be. For example, one of these features allows the Centre Admin to be able to break down the enquiries by team (like ‘Employment’ or ‘Housing’).
By releasing early and testing often, what we have ended up with — at this stage — is something that we know that people want, with evidence to back up the choice of features we have developed. If we had scoped it all out, planned every detail, and spent months building, we would have ended up with something very different than we have today. We would have likely wasted effort on features no one wanted and ended up with no clear idea of what users really need.
The good progress we have been making on this suggests that we are going about it the right way. We aim to apply this approach across the solutions we’re developing. Check out our Roadmap to find out what we’re planning on doing next.
