Learning Launch

Challenge

I work in a fintech company and I’m in the IT department and my/our challenge is to come up with  new alternative business solutions for the mobile banking solutions we provide for the banks. Each  time we have to provide a new solutions for the customers, we have to get it right as it involves  movement of money in the ecosystem, from the customer to the merchant through the bank. The  real challenge is that our solutions should be engineered and tested in real time as we mimick the  actual world where the customer will be using these solutions, so we have to make sure that are not  leaks of funds and the customer always gets the service or their money back.

Selection

Because of the nature of the business solutions we are coming up with, we simply have to test any  and all hypothesis of how the solution will be like, thus using a Learning Launch works best for us. A  learning launch is a small experiment that tests your new idea in the real marketplace. The purpose  of a learning launch is not to prove you have a good idea, but to get the truth and use the truth to  better or improve the solution being engineered.

Application

When I have designed a solution, I have to test it, so I use a virtual world environment that has all  the parameters just like in the real world when a customer is using the solution. The parameters  include the customer’s bank account number to be charged for a service and the merchant’s services  system so that the service is accessed. The problem I was solving was for instant reversal of funds to  the customer’s account in the event the customer did not get the service.

After I designed what I thought was the solutions for the problem and had developed it into the  virtual environment, I then asked a customer on boarded onto the test platform to test on one  service as I was observing the behaviour and system metrics and responses for the different test  cases against that problem solutions. I would then take all the data and analyse it then improve the  solution for the customer by feeding back into the solution and test again until the perfect solution is  achieved.

Insights

By using this tool, I quickly realised I can develop a small idea for solving a problem by simply quickly  developing and deploying it onto the test platform, test and reiterate the solution through findings  after testing each change made. This saves time of trying to come up with a complete solution, but  rather you can achieve the complete solution by doing these but small test iterations with the  customer and improving on the original idea. This also helps to even come up with new ideas to  improve on the original idea as with analyses of results from testing, we gain new perspective of  even the behaviour of the solution we are engineering.

Approach

Using the Learning Launch tool concept, I was constantly redeveloping and deploying and then ask a  volunteer to test and then iterate again. A different approach but still using the learning launch will  be to fully develop the scope of the solution and then ask the customer/volunteer to test once and  then observe the results and then use that feedback to improve on the solution. This approach save

time of doing a lot of back and forth for feedback through testing by only doing it once or twice with  the customer and then feeding back this into the solution being engineered.

