To Our Amazing Educators Everywhere,
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!
As we near the end of 2024 and look back upon the year… I’d like to share a deeper dive about our discovery process, how the R&D team creates new feature solutions.
Here is a bit of background:
In the world of product development, there are two inconvenient truths (according to renowned product leader and author Marty Cagan, founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group):
- At least half of our ideas aren’t going to work, and
- Of the ideas that do have potential, it will take several iterations before they start to deliver value.
In light of these truths, the R&D team has shifted its product discovery process and embraced the frameworkof product discovery workshop sprints (“discos” for short). In a disco, a small cross-functional team is deeply immersed in a problem space for five days. During that time, the team aligns on the problem’s opportunity, goals, risks and user research. We generate dozens (or even hundreds) of ideas, sketch out concepts, rapidly build prototypes and test them with real users. The discos are set up to encourage everyone to participate, take big swings and think innovatively ensuring that the merits of ideas, not just the loudest voice in the room, drive decisions. The R&D team held over a dozen discos across product areas in the past year, rapidly building prototypes incorporating 100+ concepts and testing with hundreds of users. Many concepts moved forward, including those that make up our new analytics offering.
Our next goal is to bring more customers into our disco sprints to co-innovate with us!
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