USER ACCEPTANCE TESTING (UAT) - DO IT WITH REAL CUSTOMERS

When you develop product or service no matter how hard you try to prepare and test various client scenarios in house, the brain and muscle memory of those who are testing will intuitively avoid scenarios that might present problems. This unintentional bias of internal testers means that critical challenges are often missed.

◼︎ When the development, construction or implementation team isn’t compensated according to the quality of their work, they aren’t motivated to release a clean solution. They are, however, often forced to stay on budget and to stick to the schedule.

◼︎ Software development teams often take chances and release code updates without any external customer testing. They expect their customers will spot issues quickly in the live environment. But in mission-critical situations, this approach can be disastrous—think of the of the Boeing 737 MAX example (ref. 20). While this is an extreme case, even if you are not putting lives in danger, it is important to test with both internal and external customers before giving the final go-ahead.

◼︎ Take the time to test your solutions with real, external customers. It will cost you more at first, but it will save on resources and embarrassment after the release. Adoption will be smoother, and customers will be invested in your solution in the long term.

The background of the Boeing 737 MAX case

ref 20. David Gelles, TheNewYorkTimes,‘Boeing737Max: What’sHappenedAfter the 2 Deadly Crashes,’

Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman

Blitzscaling reveals the secret to starting and scaling massively valuable companies.

What entrepreneur or founder doesn’t aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb? Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare. So what separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants?

The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water. The objective of Blitzscaling is not to go from zero to one, but from one to one billion –as quickly as possible.

When growing at a breakneck pace, getting to next level requires very different strategies from those that got you to where you are today. In a book inspired by their popular class at Stanford Business School, Hoffman and Yeh reveal how to navigate the necessary shifts and weather the unique challenges that arise at each stage of a company’s life cycle, such as: how to design business models for igniting and sustaining relentless growth; strategies for hiring and managing; how the role of the founder and company culture must evolve as the business matures, and more.

Whether your business has ten employees or ten thousand, Blitzscaling is the essential playbook for winning in a world where speed is the only competitive advantage that matters.