I'm wondering if anyone has any advice or best practices for starting a product working group. We are looking to match Product Owners and UX Designers with willing clients to test new features, provide feedback, participate in usability testing, etc. Has anyone done anything like this? What worked? What didn't work? I'm mostly worried about it losing momentum after a time.
Hi Rodney, we'll often run beta programs (which our product & design team is involved) to have users test out new features before making them generally available. The betas typically last 1-2 months, depending on the feature, so the commitment required for our users is not long-term. And, doing a separate beta for different new features allows us to leverage the most relevant group of users for each feature, allowing us to get really meaningful feedback.
This is great advice, Christine! We are also trying to spin up some beta groups for larger items, and I think there's definitely value to having a group that's really specific to that feature or product involved.