One of our main product suites, Visma.net, is being developed in multiple business units. This presents both challenges and opportunities. In this blog post they will share how they have worked and what they have learnt from this experience.
Background
In Visma.net, more specifically the human resource management (HRM) part, we aim to cater to both small and large companies. To make sure that meet the needs of our different customers, we work to get to know them better and test our ideas to evaluate if we are working in the right direction. We do this by conducting research.
For me, collaborating with UX Designers that I don’t usually work that closely with, really opens my eyes to new methods and ways of working. For instance, Odd-Wiking has a really nice way of introducing us and what we do to customers, something that I will try to take after. He also uses different tools than I normally use, which has now opened my eyes to a new way of recording tests.
On top of that, I think this opportunity of working together has made it clear that we should communicate more despite being in different business units. We share the same challenges and have the same goal – we want to improve the user experience. There is no easier way of doing that than by working together!
Over the past week we, Sebastian, Odd-Wiking and I, met with several small companies to test two payroll concepts against each other. The customers were given the tasks of adding a new employee and doing a wagerun using both systems.
Before going out to the customers, we created a test plan and tested our tests (yes, you read right) together to make sure they ran smoothly. During the tests we then took on different roles, where Odd-Wiking ran the tests and Sebastian and I took notes and photos which we then used to provide our development teams with summaries of our insights. With their permission, we also recorded the customers and their interaction with our systems which will further clarify to the development teams what went well and less well during the tests.
All the data gathered during these tests will be collected and presented to our stakeholders to make sure that we have a shared understanding of where we need to make improvements going forward.