Experimentation is the act of testing out a hypothesis about a product. I have been reading the Lean Startup by Eric Ries and a concept that stands out is the constant experimentation of various organizations, in order to learn whether the changes they are making have an effect on the growth, and interaction of the consumers with their product.
The concept is to ensure instead of waiting for long periods of time to release a product they would create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) release it to early adopters, get feedback to improve, and repeat. In some circumstances, the organizations would need to pivot or abandon the idea completely.
The advantage is that instead of using a lot of resources and time to create a product that users do not need, you get to create a product in shorter periods which means using fewer resources, less time, and making something people want.
Mannerisms of Experimentation
Culture starts with the leaders of the organization. As product managers, we need to be available and accessible to the team. This ensures that the team members feel that their ideas are available and valued which encourages them to work smart and hard knowing that they matter and their opinions count.
Team ideas can be made to be experiments that reduce the risk and investment and turn the ideas into testing and data while capitalizing on the promising ideas.
Celebrate wins and losses, Wins have positive outcomes such as increasing profits and reducing costs while losses allow teams to learn and re-evaluate their ideas.
Choosing the right metrics for the experiments to be able to optimize the goals.
Building experimentation velocity by increasing the number of experiments being carried out to increase the chances of making successful ideas into successful decisions.