Reflection – Learning Launch

Challenge

I am a senior manager of a Global Service Delivery solution team for a fortune 500 MNC and we had an existing product for orchestrating our services via different Centre of Excellence (CoE) across the globe. But this product was neither in parity with the era of digital transformation nor was it fulfilling our need to expand services with new engagements and clients. Leading to infuriation bubbling under the surface, different CoE started using their own mechanism and created silos. This existing product was to be used by analysts of all CoE along with stakeholders of different line of services and the service delivery centers. The estimated hours of work was expected to be 400k annually, but it began shrinking around 15% annually, due to rejection of the tool from all levels. The stakeholders were concerned since it was affecting them from both finance and governance perspective.

Selection

Since the existing product was based on analytical data set only, I formed a core team that would be influenced by design thinking and their task was to identify all possible solutions. This team started empathizing with users from all levels using journey mapping to understand current situation effectively and later used mind mapping to set the design criteria. We then reached out to Gartner to identify if there is already any off the shelf product in marketplace which could address this design criteria. As Gartner said no such product exists, our team stated using a visualization tool to ideate solutions. Out of 5 prototypes we chose to topmost one for learning launch to co-create with our users and stakeholders.

Application

We leveraged rapid application development methodology, an iterative process, which uses low code development platform, for learning launches we had. We read several articles regarding learning launch tool for better perspective. Some such articles being -

https://www.designthinkingformobility.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/Learning_Launch_principles.pdf

https://ideas.darden.virginia.edu/the-learning-launch-how-to-grow-your-business-with-the- scientific-method

In our first learning launch we picked up few features from our design specifications like minimum IT involvements, engagement workflow, analytical dashboard and implemented them. We invested an effort of roughly 4 weeks to give it a real feel and create something that matches our expectations. We then released it to some CoE users along with stakeholders for 2 weeks. We started our feedback mechanism by capturing their thoughts and experience on this. The initial feedback was mixed one, some of them were encouraging but 20% of users stated it does not fit their need as of now. We went back and incorporated them in first product launch and then added all functionalities as per the design criteria like mobility support, resource booking workflow, governance process and time tracking mechanism. It took around another 4 weeks of hard work and we launched our next version involving more CoE users and stakeholders from all line of services. We set 3 weeks of feedback this time and within a week, we started getting positive responses from all corners. The Core success is that they are now able to plan and utilize their hours effectively as our product has shown maturity in achieving service model distribution mechanism. But that’s not the end. We started our feedback cycle again for another incremental release.

And now after 4 launches, we are at a pretty good shape with respect to our business model and to go for a final roll out.

Insight

Learning launch helped us a lot in the entire process of product development. We were able to transform our key assumptions to reality in an incremental process along with real time feedback from our customers. We prioritize our key requirements and slowly infuse them such that the users are able to map their expectations and identify their needs. This tool helped our product to be stronger in a cognitive way. We encouraged our users for open feedback and addressed them. This has helped us to co-create the product along with our stakeholders and users with minimum cost and time frame. We added different functionalities and made this more scalable product by leveraging this tool. This experiment did not cost much to business and it was tested using market data to realize our ultimate goal for an external market facing product.

Approach

We will apply the same tool again with same methodology we used in this use case. This tool helped us to quickly gain insights from end users or customers and incorporate them in the next launch. It can also help to examine that your idea or design criteria has performed well in the market or met the expectations of the user. This helps to perform experiment quickly and cost effectively so that we have buy in from finance. Principles of this tool aids team in shaping up a sharp product efficiently. It mitigates the risk of team’s confirmation biasness with respect to design and provides a good learning curve for team and individuals.

