Story: What is the user story you are currently concerned with?
Iteration: For your record, indicate the number of the iteration. E.g. is it the first time, you are working on this user story? The second? The third?
MVP/Test: For your record, indicate with which method or solution you are gaining data or insights for your story. E.g. are you running an ad campaign? Or are you prototyping a new feature?
What is it that you want to find out? Is your story based on assumptions?
Notice: You don’t start from zero! Use similar experiences from other projects or some early customer feedback as a starting point.
Put down a statement as precise as possible. The more precise the hypothesis is formulated, the easier it will be for you in the following steps.
You can choose one of the three areas. In the end, your value proposition has to match all of them. However, for one iteration or one test, it’s best to focus on just one of them. This will make your test easier and help you to better understand your results.
Desirability: Does the customer want it? Does she/he even understand it?
Viability: Is the customer willing to pay? Can I make it a (scalable) business?
Feasibility: Is the solution (technically) possible to achieve?
We, humans, tend to fall in love with our ideas, our product or solution. Even if tests fail, we easily find an excuse for continuing with the chosen path. That’s why it’s important to put down measurable success factors upfront. E.g. you might say that in order to consider your solution a success, ten customers have to give a five star reviews or have to do a very specific action.
Summarize the results, especially the unexpected ones. Also, if there is additional feedback from customers or stakeholders, put it down in writing.
This is the most important step, now you have to use your brain, ideally a bunch of brains. Look at the results and ask yourself this question for as long as necessary:
We saw that…
…and what could that possibly mean?
…and what could that possibly mean?
…and what could that possibly mean?
…
You will notice, once you hit the core! And you will end up with something e.g. customers are concerned with x, but only if y happens. Or what makes a difference is the time from request to response, we have a window of x time.
You’ve learned that results are not the same thing as interpretations. Therefore, a result is not the same thing as a learning. Go the extra mile and summarize your learnings so that they can easily be shared with others in your team or company.
Now is the best time to define the next steps. Put down whatever logical next steps you have to take in order to put the learnings into practice. Maybe also think about what is the next thing you have to learn?
We build this template based on our experiences from various projects. We have only put the main questions in the Learning Sheet. We recommend using it as a starting point. After you have done a few iterations with it you can create your own template according to the needs or you and your team.
Just test it and learn 🙂
Work alongside your story, formulate hypotheses, find indicators for answers, process the results into new insights and, eventually, take the right actions.
