How do you balance the trade-off between speed and quality when developing and testing new ideas?

??In my view, agile and lean methods are key to balancing speed and quality in idea development. They prioritize adaptability and rapid feedback. ??Continuous Feedback Involving customers early allows for timely adjustments, ensuring alignment with their needs and reducing wasted effort. ?Rapid Iteration Quick, iterative cycles foster continuous improvement, enabling teams to refine ideas efficiently and address issues promptly. ??Customer-Centric Focusing on delivering value keeps teams aligned with customer expectations, ensuring that even rapid development meets quality standards. ?? Agile and lean methods create a responsive, customer-focused development environment, striking a balance between speed and quality for lasting success.

Begin by setting clear project goals and timelines - make sure you bring on board all stakeholders. And ... what is that what your Client/Investor wants?... Prioritize rapid ideation and prototyping to accelerate the testing phase. Leverage agile methodologies, dividing tasks into manageable sprints. While speed is crucial, ensure a robust feedback loop for continuous improvement. Invest in automated testing tools to maintain quality without sacrificing velocity. Foster a culture that values efficiency and excellence, emphasizing the importance of both speed and quality in the innovation process. Regularly reassess and adjust the balance based on project requirements and evolving market dynamics.

Bei Lexware setzen wir auf Agile und Lean, um schnell und qualitativ zu entwickeln. Wir teilen unsere Epics in kleine Teile, nutzen kurze Sprints für kontinuierliche Verbesserungen und binden Kunden früh ein, um bedarfsgerechte Produkte zu schaffen. Automatisierte Tests und CI/CD f?rdern Effizienz, w?hrend cross-funktionale Teams und eine Lernkultur Flexibilit?t und Innovation unterstützen. So balancieren wir Geschwindigkeit und Qualit?t, um den Bedürfnissen unserer Kunden bestm?glich gerecht zu werden.

100%, but this shouldn't stop with the initial innovation & validation phase. Once the ideas are validated and start to scale within their markets, it's important to even go "beyond agile". Methods such as "Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)" (CI/CD is a set of practices that focus on automating the building, testing, and deployment of software. It enhances the speed and reliability of software releases.) can make sure, that a successful innovation continues to deliver impact with each new feature.

No mundo real, que é onde nós atuamos, já faz muito tempo que a velocidade e a qualidade precisam acontecer juntas. Pode haver raras exce??es, mas quase sempre nós precisamos entregar qualidade e velocidade. E com o uso de métodos ágeis e frameworks funcionais, dá para ganhar muita velocidade, sem, necessariamente, perda de qualidade.

Les premières expérimentations avec des MVPs ont un seul but, prouver l'intérêt d'un client pour un produit, service ou nouveau procédé. Rechercher la qualité ou la perfection sur un MVP, c'est trop souvent perdre du temps. Une fois l'intérêt du client prouvé, on va alors s'intéresser à la mise en place de la qualité pour un déploiement serein. Tous mes projets suivent cette méthode avec succès.

As innovation facilitator of 100+ projects, I advise you to EXPERIMENT BY PRETOTYPING, like TESLA… FAKE IT BEFORE YOU MAKE IT ???. Pretotyping is a technique for testing - and validating ideas quickly and cheap, founded by Savoia. It involves creating a simplified version of a product or service to collect user feedback and understand market demand. It’s a non-working prototype. Pretotyping reduces the risk of failure by assessing market response early in the development process. A famous pretotyping story is how Tesla ‘faked’ their first electrical car, the Roadster, using a so-called ‘glider’ of a Lotus Elise to confront their potential customers with a ‘real car’, leading to 250+ launching customers who paid $ 5000,- in advance.

Balancing speed and quality in new idea development hinges on the effective use of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Most Essential Action (MEA) concepts. MVP allows for quick release of a basic version to gather user feedback, accelerating the learning cycle. MEA focuses on the most critical actions for quality assurance. Prioritize features or tests that offer significant learning or value. This balance ensures rapid development without compromising essential quality standards. This approach fosters a dynamic environment where speed and quality coexist, leading to iterative improvements and refined end products.

L'application des concepts de MVP et de MEA est une stratégie excellente pour maintenir l'équilibre entre vitesse et qualité. Enrichissez cette approche en intégrant des retours d'utilisateurs dès les premières étapes, en utilisant des plateformes de feedback en ligne ou des groupes de discussion. Cela peut aider à affiner rapidement le MVP tout en s'assurant qu'il répond aux besoins des utilisateurs.

To navigate the trade-off between speed and quality in innovation, applying the concepts of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Most Essential Action (MEA) is key. The MVP approach enables you to launch the core functionalities of a new idea quickly to gather user feedback, while MEA focuses on executing the most critical steps needed for learning and improvement. This strategy allows for fast-paced development and testing cycles, ensuring quality through iterative refinement based on actual user insights and minimizing wasted efforts on non-essential features.

I would argue that there's a Continuum of exploration to exploitation. It does require a different mindset but having both mindsets is important. Understanding the end game is important to seeing results.

It’s kind of like when you are cleaning your couch and they tell you to spot-test it in an inconspicuous area before using on a large area. Do small rapid tests of change. Evaluate early and often. Pivot as needed. Understand your risk/failure tolerance beforehand and clearly define what success looks like.

Esse conceito é muito importante mas em português ele é mais difícil de entender, por causa da repeti??o do verbo. Em inglês é exploration e exploitation. Exploration: descoberta, busca, investiga??o, explora??o inicial Exploitation: aproveitamento, otimiza??o, extra??o, utiliza??o eficiente Você pode aprender mais sobre esse tema no livro "O Dilema da Inova??o". Equilibrar as duas coisas é essencial para qualquer empresa que queira manter sua relevancia e ampliar seu impacto ao mesmo tempo.

L'équilibre entre l'exploration et l'exploitation est fondamental. Pour l'enrichir, envisagez d'utiliser des techniques de planification adaptative, comme des feuilles de route flexibles qui peuvent être ajustées en fonction des retours et des découvertes. Cela permet une approche plus dynamique qui s'adapte aux changements tout en affinant les idées existantes.

In both instances, you have to be proactive about developing metrics to track your innovations. Knowing when and how to transition between exploration and exploitation comes from having benchmarks to define when ideas are becoming effective and useful. Tests mean nothing if you don't have benchmarks to compare them to.

I agree and generally like to describe this process as best practice adoption with local adaptation; sometimes a small tweak by a team makes all the difference.

Talvez essa seja a coisa mais importante que muita gente simplesmente deixa de lado. Nós já temos a informa??o de como fazer e o que funciona melhor disponível. Aplique esses frameworks na sua execu??o da inova??o e colete todos os benefícios que só se tornaram conhecidos por causa do trabalho de muita gente que veio antes.

Study industry best practices and benchmarks to understand standards of quality and performance. Benchmark against competitors and successful companies to identify areas for improvement and innovation.

Study industry best practices and use benchmarks to guide development. Learning from what works in the field can reduce the trial-and-error process, allowing you to maintain speed without compromising on quality.

Innovation thrives on a "learn fast" approach. Start with basic, functional prototypes to collect genuine user feedback. This strategy prioritizes learning over initial perfection, focusing on real customer experiences for guidance. Setting specific, measurable goals for each iteration is crucial. This keeps the process targeted, ensuring every step contributes meaningfully towards the end product. Iterate swiftly, incorporating user feedback to refine the product. This method fosters adaptability, often leading to outcomes that surpass market expectations. The essence is to iterate quickly, absorb learnings, and let customer insights shape a successful product.

I prefer to fail fast and often, not a big believer that quality is a major concern when experimenting for innovation. Go wild and see how many you can freak out with your ideas and experiments. Of course quality becomes a factor when you begin to narrow things down. #innovationdevelopment

Embrace a cycle of experimentation and iteration. Frequent testing of small increments allows you to adapt quickly, learn from failures, and improve the quality of your ideas, all while maintaining a fast pace.

I work with a lot of entrepreneurs; there is a tendency in some to test only the "perfect product". That creates difficulties in the development process, as often an 80% ready prototype is enough to test and get some answers.

Na minha experiência, uma boa prática é tratar suas ideias como hipóteses a serem testadas e validadas continuamente. Buscar feedback constante dos clientes ajuda a ajustar e melhorar as solu??es, equilibrando velocidade e qualidade no desenvolvimento de inova??es.

My favorite innovation philosophy is 'to go fast, go alone...to go far, go with others.' There is a sweet spot between who to engage, and when to engage them. Timeline planning helps innovators determine when to bring in the 'right' experts to move their ideas forward.

Other things to consider: - Automate repetitive tasks and processes wherever possible to save time and improve efficiency. Automation can help reduce manual errors, increase consistency, and free up resources to focus on higher-value activities that contribute to quality. - Foster a culture of cross-functional collaboration and communication among team members. Encourage collaboration between developers, designers, testers, and stakeholders to share insights, align priorities, and make collective decisions that balance speed and quality. - Implement continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) allows for faster release cycles while maintaining quality through automated testing and validation.

Set Clear Objectives: Define clear objectives and success criteria for each project or iteration to maintain focus and alignment. Prioritize Features: Use techniques like the MoSCoW method (Must, Should, Could, Won't) to prioritize features based on their importance and impact. Empower Cross-Functional Teams: Empower cross-functional teams with the autonomy and resources needed to make decisions and drive progress efficiently.

There is no silver bullet to balance the trade-off between speed and quality. Identifying if the decision is a "one-way door" or "two-way door" is key. Two-way door decisions can be calibrated based on the data points such as the ability of the solution to solve a customer problem and the immediate need to solve it. One-way door decisions are critical and it requires additional data points on potential revenue loss, impact to customer base and others.

Addressing the core question under discussion in this article, I believe that one way to navigate this trade-off between speed and quality when testing new ideas is by having a highly focused approach, to reduce complexity of your experiments. By doing it, you can build a quality asset within a reasonable timeframe. Moreover, this focused approach contributes to obtaining clearer and more meaningful results from your tests.