Lean User Testing
A Pragmatic Step-by-Step Guide to User Tests
If you believe in agile software development and delivering value to your customers and your company, reading this book is the right decision as it will greatly support your process to identify and create valuable, feasible and usable products.
“We Know What We Need to Build”
Who hasn't yet heard that dreaded, gut feeling-based notion in the past? To my experience, it is rarely valid, but more often an expression of an outdated thinking, that values output over outcome, that believes in requirement documents and micromanaging the product team.
This book, however, is dedicated to completely different approach, that Steve Blank once wrapped up in his famous quote: „There are No Facts Inside Your Building — Get Outside“. And you should do so as early as possible in the process – it is the most important task of any product team.
This book is therefore a deliberately short, focused, pragmatic manual for everyone, who designs, develops or markets software: Product manager, engineers and designers (UX/UI). It is based on hundreds of user interviews that I have run up to now and provides all you need to know to start your own user interview initiative in about two hours of your time.
Save up to 90% of Typical User Interview Costs
And there is more good news: The lean user testing approach will save up to 90% of the costs compared to outsourcing user interviews to a professional usability agency, but will return at least 80% of possible insights.
Avoid Building Expensive Features Nobody Wants
No more flying blind in the early stages: Test your hypotheses quickly and turn product discovery into your advantage over the competition.
Learn how to avoid wasting money on software nobody wants and how to deliver value instead. Obsolete features aren't just expensive to build. They also need to be maintained and probably be removed at a later stage again, not to mention their opportunity costs: Imagine what you could have built instead.
Gain More Runway for Your Startup
Optimizing the cycle-time of your product hypotheses will focus available engineering and product management resources on valuable, usable and feasible features, thus extending your runway and improving your standing for the next funding round.
Improve Communication with Stakeholders
User tests greatly simplify the communication with stakeholders – the interviews, you will be running, are your product organization's first line of defense when it comes to turning down unreasonable feature requests.
About the Author
The author has worked for many years as a product manager and agile coach (Scrum, Lean Startup, Lean Change). During that time, he developed B2C as well as B2B software, mainly for startups, including a former Google subsidiary.
He originally studied chemistry, business administration, and law. However, he has never worked in a laboratory. Instead, back in 1996, he released the first online shop software with SAP R/3 connectivity, only to learn that the early bird does not necessarily catch the worm.
After his move to Berlin, Germany, he founded a marketplace for local service. In 2011, Entrepreneurs Club Berlin e.V. followed, as did Startup Camp Berlin— one of the largest German startup conferences today.
His latest project, Age Of Product – Invent For Your Customers, focuses on the exchange of knowledge between product people, designers, and developers. It is about lessons learned and best practices on how to identify which product to build and how to build it in an efficient way. Age Of Product will host events and workshops in Berlin from autumn 2015 on and might also organize a new conference in the near future.
