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"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please", or why I love continuous learning with continuous deployment. by: Steve Sanderson Most of us have worked where there's tremendous effort on planning, anticipating the needs of our customers, testing before release to our customers, re-thinking, re-considering and re-coding. To a developer, the only thing that may seem worse is when there's none of this. Regardless, we expect to know, in advance what's true about our customers. What if both alternatives are wrong? What if, instead, we assume we're ignorant and use our creativity to learn? Then, we'd continually run live experiments with our users to see what works; and gather more metrics than we know what to do with; and continually deploy changes to adapt those learnings. Find out why we worked this way, the results we achieved and the specific tools and technologies we use.
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In the presentation titled "Get Your Facts First, Then You Can Distort Them as You Please," Steve Sanderson discusses the significance of continuous learning and deployment within the context of a startup called Food on the Table, which focuses on meal planning services for families. The talk emphasizes an innovative, metrics-driven approach to product development, setting it apart from traditional product management processes. **Key Points:** - **Continuous Learning and Deployment:** Sanderson advocates for using a continuous learning model where small, data-driven experiments with users inform product decisions rather than relying on broad assumptions about customer needs. - **Comparison of Traditional Approaches:** He contrasts two dominant methods in tech development: one that is heavily planned and organized, and another that is chaotic and directionless. Sanderson proposes a more organic growth model based on iterative feedback. - **Initial Experimentation:** Sanderson shares a story of their initial approach, where they engaged with real customers to simulate the meal planning process, testing their hypothesis before investing in technological solutions. - **Identifying Business Metrics:** The significance of establishing essential metrics is highlighted, specifically targeting user retention and engagement to create a sustainable business model. - **Leveraging Technology for Feedback:** Instead of limiting their interactions to in-person meetings, the team utilized digital tools to efficiently share and receive feedback, all before any formal coding began. - **The Role of Data in Decision Making:** Emphasizing the importance of tracking KPIs, he describes how they collected user event data and sought to reconcile it without losing control over their metrics. - **Testing Hypotheses Quickly:** The narrative includes anecdotes about identifying user challenges and testing assumptions using minimal efforts, leading to quick iterations rather than large, time-consuming projects. - **Insights on User Behavior:** Sanderson discusses how focused testing, such as optimizing the user experience on their grocery list page, helped identify key factors influencing retention rates. - **Importance of Adaptation:** The presentation concludes with insights into how a flexible, testing-oriented approach allows for quick adaptation to user needs, helping the startup manage unexpected growth when featured on popular platforms. **Conclusion and Takeaways:** Steve Sanderson encapsulates the essence of the entrepreneurial journey at Food on the Table, illustrating how adopting a mindset of continuous feedback and adjustment helps mitigate developmental risks. He encourages participants to embrace experimentation and agile methodologies in their tech endeavors, suggesting that such practices enhance relevance and value to customers.
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