Part 6 - Deploy and Repeat OR Fail and reinvent

To initiate the redesign of the mobile application, there are many forces that have to align. And certain factors that serve the cause are needed to be in an environment that fosters outcome based discussion. Room has to be made for failures and pivots, not every conceived idea will seamlessly end-up as perceived. Some knowns that usually are ignored but need strong conversation. ?

Minimum Viable Product

MVP – You have a baseline already and the new app has to adopt the existing successes and address the failures.

Technology

90% of New Mobile applications are built to address technical challenges, the team needs to ensure that the new strategy for technology is built for a span of at least 4 years. The idea is to maintain composability and modularity to a degree that is feasible.

Branding

Many miss to align the brand position and go overboard with the design aspects. If your brand is positioning itself for a segment, ensure that the features that are most relevant get the most real estate and prominence.

Fundamentals

Automation is a boon, until it fails. This is why operational support and addressability has to be built into the application. Many such fundamentals where human interaction is necessitated need to be carefully embedded.

The current changes never stop and they are needed as the new development and deployment will take time. The time of overlap is needed. There will be an inflection point, where existing app should be put in maintenance mode and the changes on the new one take over, this allows the users to transition. Beta Phase is key for the new app as you can collect significant data and course correct.

There are many difficult choices when you start the conversation to Design a new Mobile application. To simplify this, we recommend you start with the building blocks. While most of the conversation is around Technology, the discussion has to start with data. Numbers and Patters are very important as they are the successes that you already enjoy, they need to be retained. How do we deploy successfully, quickly and consistently, Hence, repeat. With the repeat comes the business question, when we release a new feature, service or fix, How do we track failure or usage, hence reinvent.

It all boils down to criteria that are ring-fenced within your environment. To structure a strong and consistent delivery pipeline we had built a similar structure. How do you do it. The 3 pillars

• Design: The design is not UI alone but a mix of interactions, placement, automations, aids, nudges and user experience elements
• Feature: Each interaction area should be treated like a sub product with a very independent and they all rollup to have an amalgamated capability.
• Building blocks: Not only technology, we need to look at operational aspects, launch mechanism, marketing, cost and returns. Every aspect that influences the customer experience.

All these require the MVP to be the input. The base structure, where each feature has to interact with other elements need to be built as the underlying core functionality of the app. Here is a view of the ecosystem that should be considered.

A few practices that keep the morale high

Celebrate Successes and pivot on failures. Every change and every release was treated with the fanfare and launch support like you would for a new initiative. Was it exhausting, Yes for the first few times and then it became a habit. We partied after every release, irrespective of the outcome.

Ideas that sounded outlandish were debated and brainstormed.

Everyone looked at the Priority List as the guiding light. It was running things in parallel.

Effort was calculated and estimated to ensure business was ready when technology was ready. The force was we needed a convergent point for every release.

People who found issues with the Beta versions were celebrated. This became an aspiration to break the feature. Resulting in a robust and non-combustible feedback loop.

We never left sight of the people agenda. This is not being presented intentionally in this series as it is a huge angle. We had to grow teams rapidly as the demand and requirements were accelerating with business size increasing many fold. Core principles were adhered to.

The most significant learning we had was, “If there is a need to slowdown, do so. A feline always takes 2 steps back, collects its strength before making the leap on its prey / target”.

#buildvsbuy?#bank?#mobileapp?#customerexperience?#chaos?#engineering?#hiring?#process?#people?#simple