Reflection – Learning Launch

By: Rafaela Nasser

Challenge: A professional development organization had been hearing anecdotal feedback that  it wasn’t communicating or sharing resources with its members effectively. The word on the  street was that they were sending way too many communications, often not even relevant to  the individual and that it was hard to find any useful resources on the existing platforms. Many  members were also younger generations and communications had not been optimized for  mobile devices (where the majority of younger generations spend their time). A solution was  proposed to resolve this issue which consisted of implementing a new platform that was highly  personalized to the individual and optimized for mobile devices. This way members could  receive personalized information at their fingertips on their terms.

The project was viewed positively by internal staff, however minimal data existed to drive  decisions in designing the new platform. As the Project Manager, I was tasked with leading the  project team to test if these assumptions were accurate and design a platform that would add  value to members. But where should the project team start if minimal data existed to guide  decisions on design? Also, some members of internal staff expected a big launch of the new  platform with only one chance to get it “right”.

Selection: As the project began, we realized the need to experiment and test key assumptions  given the lack of data and understanding of the membership base. I decided that a learning  launch was crucial to the success of the project. A learning launch is “a small experiment that  tests your new idea in the real marketplace” (University of Darden). The project team had to  start somewhere and given the current environment (lack of data, need to launch ASAP), the  team did not have time to gather additional data needed to drive the project. A learning launch  would allow the team to experiment with and test small ideas with actual members to gain the  insight they needed to add value for its members. In addition to engineering success on the  project, the learning launch would minimize the risk associated with a big bang launch and  allow the project team to “fail fast” instead of betting everything on getting it “right” the first  time.

Application: I lead the team through an effort to give some definition as to the goals of the  platform and the tactics we could use to accomplish those the goals. We then prioritized the  tactics by the value we thought they would deliver to our members. We used our best  judgement based on the data we did have. We then developed our idea in small incremental  stages of testable functionality. We rallied up a small group of members that represented

various age groups, backgrounds, specialty areas, genders, and demographics to conduct a  learning launch. The group of members was tasked with using the new platform. We observed  how they used the platform, analyzed data on usage, and surveyed the members after they  spent some time with the new platform. This allowed us to test our assumptions before putting  the new platform into the broader marketplace.

Insight: In conducting the learning launch, we realized that while we had provided value to a  specific segment of our membership base, we had not added value for a different segment of  our membership base. We realized we needed to hone in on the needs of these different  segments of members so that we could provide real value for all our members. We needed to  run additional experiments for these groups were neglected. Conducting the learning launch  made us realize that design needs may not always be universal and to really add value to our  members, we need to look at the needs of individuals and not just the group as whole. The  learning launch helped us see our members as people and allowed us to more deeply  understand their needs as humans.

Approach: While the learning launch was successful and allowed us to understand the needs of  various members more deeply, we realized that next time mind mapping at the beginning  would be useful. Mind mapping would help us organize ideas and needs of various segments so  that we could design with the segments of members in mind.

