So, you have a shiny new app and it's time to introduce it to everyone and ensure a seamless experience for both your team and clients. You may be thinking, ‘we’ve paid HutSix to develop a scope to determine our needs, why do we need to pay them to develop the software but not test it - why do we have to do that?' – great point! The reason being, you know your team, stakeholders and clients better than we ever could. We like to think our scoping is pretty good, but there’s no way we can predict every possible edge case, scenario and curveball before we get working on your system. It’s only through user testing, experience and feedback that we get to learn how to tweak your system to best suit your needs and to evolve as it does.

Our team will never know what it’s like to work with Glenda in accounts. Or that one client that always seems to be one with the complicated requests. Or the employee that keeps forgetting their password.

Create a Plan

HutSix will work with you to develop an onboarding plan for the initial rollout of a feature, and identify three different user groups. The first is identifying who in your team is best suited to be the guinea pigs (or beta testers in software development terminology). These users will be fairly comfortable using a computer, and are actively involved in the delivery of the program that is being managed by the database. 

The next group of users you want are people who are involved in the program delivery, but don’t use a computer too often. This is a great group to test a system as they aren’t constantly in the application all the time, so they are a perfect test on how intuitive the system really is. 

The last user group is users who may be more technologically challenged. The reason we recommend engaging this user group at the end, is because by this point, ideally 70 - 90% of your team has now used the app at least once and is semi-confident in their ability. This means that the team can collectively help each other troubleshoot problems, instead of forming a bottle neck back to you, the testing ring leader. 

Create a handover flyer 

We often get requests from clients for extensive documentation on their app, which we politely decline. The reason isn’t because we don’t want to do it (although, it is a bit boring if we’re being honest), but because we find that users don't actually use it. Instead, we recommend a fact sheet, which is easy to stick up in the tea room and email out to people. We’re able to create this for our clients if they’re interested, or you can create it yourself. 

We recommend it adhering to the following requirements: 

• Keep it to one page 
• Include the following instructions: 
• Write out the URL for the app 
• List the internet browsers that you can use to access the app 
• Provide instructions on how someone’s username will be set up 
• Provide instructions on how to reset the password 
• Who to talk to if you’re stuck 

Once you’ve got that distributed around your offices, it’s a great resource to lean on to make sure everyone can access the app and has a quick resource on where to go for simple questions and help themselves first. 

Tell HutSix 

Feedback on how implementing the feature has gone should be delivered back to the HutSix team in a consistent manner - we want to know what your questions, problems, wins and new ideas are! 

This type of testing is called customer test-driven development (CTDD). CTDD encompasses anything beyond unit and integration testing - which are done by and for the engineers - which may include functional, system, stress, security and usability testing.

What's next?

Now that your app is seamlessly integrated into your team's workflow, it's crucial to maintain regular check-ins and keep communication lines open.

Stay connected with us as we ensure your app evolves in sync with your ever-evolving needs.