PUTTING HYPOTHESES TO WORK
The key to successful hypothesis-driven practices is embracing
• Transform from a functional organisation to a customer-based
experimentation and testing. Experts know to look beyond the one. If you orient to the audience based on your testing data,
obvious and consider every element of the app and the user you’re primed for ongoing success. Structure your business
experience. When you’re working on the back end of a project, processes based on this concept. Spotify, for example, has
it’s easy to get lost in the mechanics of an app. Remember to test digital strategies embedded at the very core of its operating
based on diverse user behaviours and interactions. For example, model, and it splits teams up into very small ones that own a
test whether users need search before trying to determine the
ideal location of the search box. Simply put, avoid working on
features that aren’t even necessary!
specific piece of functionality from end to end.
• Reduce or eliminate handoffs. The Waterfall process is full
of stops and starts because each phase and group operates
in isolation. Hypothesis-driven organisations should include
New mobile technologies are developed every day, and it’s no strategy as part of the team, making the deployment of
longer possible to pretend that ideas developed through up-front actionable code a shared priority. Include development,
planning and research are relevant by the time they are introduced operations, design and the business as you develop and test
as features. The change is rapid; the users are diverse and
selective. Your development team should work to accommodate
your product.
• Apply learnings across the board. Insights aren’t limited
every existing and new variation. Smartphone users use apps to customer-facing applications. Increasing numbers of
differently than tablet users; iOS users often behave differently organisations are also using mobile solutions to help employees
than Android users. Test anything and everything, because users self-organise or work autonomously. Digital applications serve
can be sensitive to even the smallest of changes. the needs of all your stakeholders—from employees to partners
to customers. Ensure that the employee digital experience is
Instead of immediately launching featur es you think will succeed,
just and strong as that of your customers.
consider that the app’s purpose is to test hypotheses and to
learn more about the technology and its users. Make sure your Your best bet in app development is to use hypotheses to create
app consistently reports back on usage and adoption, and follow something good enough—and then pursue excellence through
the numbers. Use the empirical data it collects to define your iterative testing. The most intense, careful and strategic planning
evolution; avoid relying heavily on interviews and qualitative is no guarantee against failure.
research.
Our world is driven and defined by data and speed, and your
Hypothesis-driven enterprises exercise these practices constantly, users expect you to use both to provide the best possible user
and in every part of the organisation. You are not delivering a experience. Becoming a hypothesis-driven organisation, with team
one-off app and then walking away; continued success demands structures and processes that support rapid, converging change
ongoing engagement and change. Include strategists and key as a primary goal, will allow you to build, test, learn and repeat,
stakeholders from the start, and if transforming an entire leveraging your digital apps to drive value for the business.
organisation seems daunting, start with your product team. Once
you have aligned them, the rest will fall into place and allow you to
achieve the following:
DIGITECH Magazine
Summer 2017
15