Are you already using the Build-Measure-Learn method in your startup? Would you like to get more out of the weeks or months you sacrifice to build your product? If you think yes, this post is for you.
For those of you who don’t know, the Build-Measure-Learn method was introduced already in 2011 in a book called The Lean Startup. It had ground-breaking consequences on how startups build their products today. The purpose of the method is to learn as fast as possible and iterate or pivot if the assumptions are not valid.
Some startups have even gone so far as releasing broken products that their end-customers end up testing for them. Testing might be seen as a hindrance that cannot add value. Problems are fixed after the fact when customers point them out for you. While lost revenue is one problem of too fast release, releasing broken products means you cannot get proper validation for your business idea or concept because customers are leaving for the wrong reasons! A broken sign up process does not let you validate your core value proposition. But release speed and product quality are old enemies, right?… Not necessarily!
If you read through what Eric Ries wrote back in 2010 in his article, he wrote that:
“Remember, the minimum in minimum viable product does not mean that you should ship just anything at the nearest possible date. It means to ship as soon as it is possible to learn what you need to learn.”
To learn faster, you need validation that is not misinterpreted due to a software bug, meaning you can learn from every visitor.
But learning how to write tests might take time you don’t have… Testing with the industry standard Selenium might take you couple of weeks to get started and it doesn’t scale well with your product if you need to invest in infrastructure and hire testing professionals with specific skills. So should you release that buggy version instead? Of course not… Usetrace is here to help you with those problems.
We at Usetrace have built an easy-to-learn, cloud-based testing software so that anyone can quickly test web apps without coding skills. You can release bugless software without sacrificing those productive software developer hours. Just trace the steps your customers would use and automate that test to run every ten minutes so you know immediately when something breaks. No more lost sign ups due to a broken form or redirect, awesome!
What’s even better is that using test automation from the very beginning of the project can help you find bugs the moment you change code and something breaks. The sooner a bug is found and fixed, the less repercussions it has later on when new things are built on top of the previous code. It’s like having one crooked card on the bottom of a house of cards.
Stop testing your product with your end-users and get that valuable validation data from your customers. Start tracing your customers’ steps in minutes and increase your build-test-measure-learn loop speed.
Ps. Were here to help you on that journey if you need anything. Just use our customer chat to drop us a message.
