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Momcilo is a Product Owner at Symphony.is. He is the author of Treasure Roadmap book. You can find him somewhere between art, technology, and business - combining the three and creating awesome things. Learn more at momcilodakic.com

Momcilo Dakic

<figure style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="//wp-content/uploads/2019/05/396786be-ac5a-40f6-9957-f3b7da744b0a_103nTVdSsBC3xe4_rZWJL_A.jpeg" alt="" width="1200" height="675" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Testimonial: /ˌtestɪˈməʊniəl/ a formal written statement about the qualities of a product or service</figcaption></figure>
<p>Product people usually spend a substantial period of time in a problem-solution space, learning about customers, about their pain points, and seeking opportunities to add value.</p>
<p>The products they develop will eventually solve some problems and make people&#8217;s lives easier, and there is nothing wrong with this approach. However, I want to present a different perspective, <strong>Testimonial Driven Development</strong> (TDD). It will let you see further into the future, beyond just product outcomes. I came up with the concept during a workshop a couple of years ago and have been using it successfully ever since.</p>
<p>Testimonial Driven Development is something beyond building great products. It is about building experiences which delight your customers. I&#8217;m sure your product adds value for your customers, but have you tried adding value to your added value? Sounds confusing? Well, an additional value which I&#8217;m referring to is a value on a personal level of the customer. It&#8217;s great if you solve the problem, but if you go the extra mile and give them an experience which will touch them on a personal, emotional level, they will be delighted. There are several benefits coming from a delighted customer:</p>
<ul>
<li>They are more likely to recommend to their peers (<em>business scaling, network effect</em>)</li>
<li>They will become a product evangelist (<em>free influencer marketing</em>)</li>
<li>They will be a regular, returning customer asking for more (<em>strong brand, recurring revenues</em>)</li>
<li>Your product will serve a higher cause (<em>mission-oriented business</em>)</li>
</ul>
<p>Sounds nice, doesn&#8217;t it?</p>
<h2>Testimonial Driven Development Explained</h2>
<p>So how does Testimonial Driven Development work? I&#8217;ve organized my explanation into three parts:</p>
<ol>
<li>Introducing an example</li>
<li>Testimonial anatomy</li>
<li>Reverse engineering</li>
</ol>
<h3>1. Introducing an Example</h3>
<p>For the sake of the story and easier understanding, imagine that you and I are building a startup. It&#8217;s called <strong>ProdBook</strong>. It is a multi-sided platform, connecting product managers and product people who want to exchange their used books. The platform is used for selling and buying used books. The books in this marketplace are business-related, especially in the field of product management and software development.</p>
<p>The platform would enable product people to exchange their books, share their recommendations, and book reviews. Users of the platform will be able to sell their books and find new ones, recommended by their peers. This is a basic concept of this imaginary platform.</p>
<p>Great. Where do we start?</p>
<p>In testimonial driven development, we start from the end. Fast-forward yourself to the future and imagine happy faces of your customers. Imagine how they feel relieved and delighted. Try to hear them talking about your product, and take notes about what made them feel awesome. Got that picture in your head? Great. Now think about how your product will make them feel that way. Think about the delighting experience you can offer. Now try to put this feeling into words &#8211; testimonials. Set your expectations by defining the statements from your happy customers.</p>
<p>Often, we limit ourselves by only thinking about the problem’s immediate solution. Rarely do we think about what comes next. What will the customer feel after using the solution that you offer? Testimonial driven development is all about providing solutions with delighting experiences.</p>
<h3>2. Testimonial Anatomy</h3>
<p>What is a <strong>testimonial</strong>?</p>
<p>A testimonial is a formal written statement about the qualities of a product or service.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve analyzed a sample of testimonials and found a common pattern. Almost every testimonial consists of four essential pieces:</p>
<ol>
<li>Stress</li>
<li>Relief</li>
<li>Delight</li>
<li>Persona</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>Stress</strong> is the part of the testimonial where customers describe the problem they experience. This is a valuable piece of information for product manager because it explains the users’ pain points. If you understand the problem that you’re solving, you’re more likely to come up with the right solution</p>
<p><strong>Relief</strong> is the part of the testimonial where customers describe a particular feature of your product which helped them to achieve the intended goal. This part is interesting because it describes the tools and features of your product that the customers love and use the most.</p>
<p><strong>Delight</strong> is the sweetest part of the testimonial. It&#8217;s the part where your customers really feel good after using the product. It&#8217;s also the part where you feel <strong>accomplished</strong> and <strong>proud</strong> because you made someone&#8217;s life better. This is the feeling that we seek in TDD.</p>
<p><strong>Persona</strong> is a user profile behind the testimonial. It describes the personality and target audience for your product. It provides information such as age, interest, area of expertise, habits, and preferences. This is also a piece of valuable information for market segmentation and a better understanding of your audience.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s go back to the ProdBook example. Imagine a platform user saying something along these lines:</p>
<blockquote><p>You made my book search so much faster and effective. I just type in my interests and your algorithm provides the most popular titles instantaneously. And the community on the platform is awesome. Landed my dream job by using your networking feature!!<br />
<cite>Mark Terry, ProdSoft Inc. CTO.</cite></p></blockquote>
<p>Sounds good, it appears that Mark is very happy with our product. He is delighted because he was able to find his dream job by using ProdBook platform. How can we lay out our product development plan based on this information?</p>
<h3>3. Reverse Engineering  &#8211;  Extracting Value From a Testimonial</h3>
<p>Let’s breakdown the testimonial and examine the meaning behind this statement.</p>
<h4>Stress</h4>
<p>As always, we start from the root cause of user frustration, or <strong>stress</strong> in TDD. Read the testimonial and try to figure out the problem that the user is experiencing.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-16097" src="//wp-content/uploads/2019/05/stress-TDD-1-300x169.png" alt="" width="604" height="340" srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/stress-TDD-1-300x169.png 300w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/stress-TDD-1-768x432.png 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/stress-TDD-1-1024x576.png 1024w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/stress-TDD-1-285x160.png 285w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/stress-TDD-1-570x320.png 570w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/stress-TDD-1.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 604px) 100vw, 604px" /></p>
<p><img decoding="async" src="undefined" alt="" />Mark talks about a book search. We all agree that our time is precious. We also all agree that we should learn more every day. The tricky part is to choose the best sources for learning, the best in terms of return on time invested. So Mark’s frustration is related to the time required to find an appropriate book. He would love someone to provide him with a ranking algorithm suitable for his interests and expectations, and possibly reading history and preferences. Which leads us to the next part of the testimonial…</p>
<h4>Relief</h4>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-16093" src="//wp-content/uploads/2019/05/d77fc35d-d4d7-40bf-ab40-1bb8928a5e78_1BVlHsSaVvBvMe_UKVdvrig-300x169.png" alt="" width="596" height="336" srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/d77fc35d-d4d7-40bf-ab40-1bb8928a5e78_1BVlHsSaVvBvMe_UKVdvrig-300x169.png 300w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/d77fc35d-d4d7-40bf-ab40-1bb8928a5e78_1BVlHsSaVvBvMe_UKVdvrig-768x432.png 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/d77fc35d-d4d7-40bf-ab40-1bb8928a5e78_1BVlHsSaVvBvMe_UKVdvrig-285x160.png 285w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/d77fc35d-d4d7-40bf-ab40-1bb8928a5e78_1BVlHsSaVvBvMe_UKVdvrig-570x320.png 570w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/d77fc35d-d4d7-40bf-ab40-1bb8928a5e78_1BVlHsSaVvBvMe_UKVdvrig.png 800w" sizes="(max-width: 596px) 100vw, 596px" /></p>
<p>This is the part where users talk about the key features of your product. This is where you want to see your flagship feature in all its glory and magnificence. You might think that a single testimonial is too short to describe your key feature. But that is the point  &#8211;  your key feature should be so simple that it can fit into a sentence. Keep it simple and effective. Hide the complexity and make things look easy and effortless.</p>
<p>See how simple that sounds: just type in my interests and the algorithm provides the most popular titles instantaneously. Notice that there is nothing about the machine learning algorithms, data collection, user profiling etc. The complexity is hidden. Of course, the complexity will be required in order to provide these results and meet expectations, but nobody has to know about it. Anyway, the relief part of the testimonial is the core of your product, and the value you provide for your users.</p>
<h4>Delight</h4>
<p>This part of the testimonial screams with excitement! This is a statement about something that the user did not expect but it blew their mind. This is a part of your product that is not directly related to problem-solving. Rather, it is a surprise that provides a competitive advantage. It is not necessarily a big benefit for the user. It is just a sprinkle of stardust which makes them feel special and understood. A thoughtful gesture that will warm their hearts.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-16092" src="//wp-content/uploads/2019/05/69a87753-c4dd-4a9d-9e47-cf4d90f343af_157On2NTaxBpL36vtknSNYQ-300x169.png" alt="" width="621" height="350" srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/69a87753-c4dd-4a9d-9e47-cf4d90f343af_157On2NTaxBpL36vtknSNYQ-300x169.png 300w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/69a87753-c4dd-4a9d-9e47-cf4d90f343af_157On2NTaxBpL36vtknSNYQ-768x432.png 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/69a87753-c4dd-4a9d-9e47-cf4d90f343af_157On2NTaxBpL36vtknSNYQ-285x160.png 285w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/69a87753-c4dd-4a9d-9e47-cf4d90f343af_157On2NTaxBpL36vtknSNYQ-570x320.png 570w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/69a87753-c4dd-4a9d-9e47-cf4d90f343af_157On2NTaxBpL36vtknSNYQ.png 800w" sizes="(max-width: 621px) 100vw, 621px" /></p>
<p><strong>Delight</strong> is the sweetest part of the testimonial. It’s the part where your customers really feel good about using the product. Mark was not expecting to find his dream job on a book-sharing platform. But our networking feature enabled it to happen. It actually seems so obvious: you have an abundance of data about user preferences and their interests so it seems natural to leverage the data and create a delighter for the users. Tinder for business, so to speak.</p>
<h4>Persona</h4>
<p>Stress, relief, and delight are the core elements of a statement. But there is more. This statement contains the author. Describe your potential customers with their name, age, and profession. This will shed some light on the market segment that you want to attract.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-16098" src="//wp-content/uploads/2019/05/persona-TDD-300x169.png" alt="" width="628" height="354" srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/persona-TDD-300x169.png 300w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/persona-TDD-768x432.png 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/persona-TDD-1024x576.png 1024w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/persona-TDD-285x160.png 285w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/persona-TDD-570x320.png 570w, /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/persona-TDD.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 628px) 100vw, 628px" /></p>
<p>The <strong>Persona</strong> is as important as the other three parts of the testimonial. This information will keep you focused on a specific group of people. Designing a good product requires you to know your audience. Specifying the profile for your imaginary testimonial author is very important for you and your team. This will help during the design phase.</p>
<h3>Key Takeaways</h3>
<ul>
<li style="list-style-type: none;">
<ul>
<li><strong>Stress</strong> — learn about the problem, identify the pain points and discover opportunities.</li>
<li><strong>Relief</strong> — solve the problem in the best way possible.</li>
<li><strong>Delight</strong> — provide the best user experience and put a bit of extra work in to make your users feel special.</li>
<li><strong>Persona</strong> — get to know your customers and define the market segment you want to attract.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>That&#8217;s it. Simple, but effective. This was an example with only one testimonial. But any workshop should provide a dozen testimonials. This framework will make you think about the solutions but also, it will make you think about that little delighter that makes all the difference. It is what will make you stand out from the crowd. It is why your customers will absolutely love your product. So, go ahead, delight us!</p>
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