Twitter made news this week with the announcement of their new beta program. But this is no ordinary product testing play. They’ve built a standalone version of Twitter, with new full-blown features for these select users to try.
“Unlike traditional betas, where users test nearly completed features before public launch, the feedback from the beta could radically change the direction of what’s being built. Or, in some cases, what’s not.” Sara Haider, Director of PM for Twitter.
While a lot of people in the industry are calling this a desperate attempt to become relevant, I see it as a brilliant product play. Too often beta periods are about QA and surface-level feedback. By the time most products get to their pre-launch stage, the features are baked, and there is no going back.
We’d like to believe that as human beings we are rational decision makers. The reality is that we are emotional beings and often don’t realize what is driving the choices we make.
The most common challenge we face is letting go of past decisions. While we know we should make rational decisions based on future outcomes and value; our decisions get tainted by the emotional baggage of past investments. Otherwise, known as the sunk cost fallacy.
Too many products fail because of this way of thinking. Twitter’s new program is an attempt to break out of this mold and to shorten the time to get it right. It’s admirable what they are trying to do, and other teams would benefit from the same approach.
But I don’t have the resources
I know what you’re thinking, “this may be good for Twitter, but we don’t have the resources to build a parallel product.” I get it, and I agree. Most companies don’t have these resources. That’s OK. Let’s rethink how we approach the problem.
- What if we didn’t build the product? Just design it.
- What if we didn’t design the product? Just sketch it.
- What if we didn’t sketch the product? Just describe it.
When describing Twitter’s program, Sara Haider said: “Unlike a traditional beta that is the last step before launch, we’re bringing people in super early.” This concept is the key.
Twitter is engaging customers deeply in the process. They are going to use the feedback to drive the product direction, potentially throwing away their ideas and months of work.
I’ve gone through this myself. A few years ago we launched a product called the CarStory Market Report. We create and aggregate analytics to help consumers understand what makes a car unique. From day one, we knew for the product to be a success, consumers had to view it as trustworthy.
We were in the process of adding new analytics to the report and realized the product needed a complete design overhaul. The team spent about four weeks working on the updated concept. The new design was clean, modern, easy to understand — we all loved it!
This version was our third redesign in less than two years. Each time we launched a new version we tested it with consumers and asked them a few simple questions. The first was “Please rate the trustworthiness of this data.” The previous design showed a nice bump in our performance on this question and we expected a similar improvement on the third design.
Then the results came back. We took a major hit on trustworthiness. It was so bad there was no way we could increment our way back from the design. We only had one choice. Start over. We scrapped the whole approach and went back to the drawing board.
With product, it’s not always about the quality or elegance of the design. It’s also about the metrics we’re trying to impact. While we didn’t build a production-ready product for users to try, we were able to get invaluable feedback and save ourselves from a colossal misstep. We just had to take the time to ask.
If you are looking for more ideas on how to test concepts early, check out the Product Discovery Activity Guide from the product team at The New York Times. It has over 70 different ways to gather feedback and test ideas that help increases the chances of shipping the right product.
Key takeaway: Don’t be afraid to throw it all away.
But I don’t have the time
“I hear you Chad, but I don’t have time to collect customer input and then build something else entirely.”
This objections tends to come from deadline pressures to ship. The problem is that shipping the wrong thing fast is worthless. As Yogi Berra famously said, “We’re lost, but we’re making good time!”
Shipping the right thing is what matters.
There are sorts of methodologies and philosophies that help you to do both — agile, MVPs, lean, etc. The goal is the same regardless of your approach. You have to get the product right.
A lot of people claim they’ll ship and change it later. Or perhaps ship and tweak it on the fly. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that this often isn’t the case.
Ask yourself these questions and then decide.
- When was the last time you threw away a major capability in your product that you launched less than six months ago?
- When was the last time you completely overhauled a feature that you launched less than six months ago?
- When was the last time you prioritized more dev effort to A/B testing on an existing feature than you did on building new ones?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, bravo. But my guess is most will answer no.
Answering yes to these questions requires that we admit we failed or that we don’t have the answer. Both are OK!
Unfortunately, our damn ego tries to tell us that we can’t do either. As a result, we charge ahead building the next new feature. One reasons we pursue this path is that it’s more fun. The other is that it delays the day of accountability.
As a product owner, it can be hard to admit a mistake. Add this to the growing list of reasons this is a tough job. We all have to lead on this point. Owning up to a problem early on gives everyone a chance to course correct. In the process, it increases the likelihood of success down the road — which is what we all want.
Key takeaway: Prove yourself wrong to get the product right.
Life or death product decisions
Product is a high stakes game. Twitter sees that, and my guess is this that you see it as well. You may be the senior product leader or one of many product managers. Your decisions shape the product and the eventual outcome.
When we’re in the trenches writing user stories, analyzing data, and planning sprints, it’s hard to see the impact at times. Why? Because it can take months or years to fully know how a decision drove the success or failure of the business. But every choice matters and the sooner we find out, the better.
Look at Amazon Prime. It launched in February of 2005. The idea came from a software engineer named Charlie Ward. He wasn’t a product owner, but he noticed the demand customers had for fast shipping and shared the concept.
I suspect there were plenty of people within Amazon that thought Prime was a terrible idea. Of course, before launch, everyone works off of opinions. Sure, they may be informed opinions, but they’re only educated guesses.
Getting the data is critical. In some cases, you have to launch to know. Don’t just give this lip service. Communicate to the entire team upfront that the launch is about validation. The goal is to prove or disprove the hypothesis. After go live, bring all the data back and move from opinion to facts.
Going back to Amazon Prime, they launched and got the answers they needed. Fast forward 14 years and Prime is now the gold-standard in e-commerce. Customers expect two-day shipping from everyone. More importantly, this subscription service created a massive loyalty driver for Amazon, further cementing their dominant position.
As with Prime, sometimes you have to ship to get answers. I’ve had countless experiences of customers giving me feedback and telling me exactly what they needed. We mocked up the concepts, tested the designs on multiple users only to find out after launch that people barely used what we built.
Sometimes you can do everything right and still get it wrong. It’s a reality of product. What matters is that you are relentless in getting the data and shortening the time it takes to get it right.
Key takeaway: Get the data today, to ensure success tomorrow
Obsess over your customers
Too often we obsess over our solutions. Product after product has failed after someone uttered these words “Wouldn’t it be great if we built a product to…”
Innovation isn’t about ideas; it’s about solving problems.
Nobody cares about your ideas, they care about their problems and whether or not you can solve them. Products don’t fail because of a lack of good ideas. Instead it’s a lack of persistence to stick with and really solve a tough problem.
This statement alone isn’t the root cause. It’s what comes next. All too often we get enamored with our idea and laser in on that single approach. This thinking should be a warning sign. It steals our focus from the problem.
Albert Einstein said it well with this famous quote: “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute solving it.”
Succerss starts with doubling down on what customers need. Pour over support tickets. Do customer success calls. Contact prospects that chose a competitor. Dig into your data. Talk to your sales team. Be relentless when it comes to understanding customer problems and the jobs they are trying to get done.
If you’re looking for more insight on this topic, check out my course on Udemy. It’s a less than an hour long, and I break down the elements of the jobs to be done framework and how you can use it to build breakout products.
Key takeaway: Don’t create a solution until you understand the problem
I hope these concepts help you bring better products to market, sooner. Feel free to share your best practices and techniques in the comments below. I’m sure the community would love to hear your thoughts.
