The Colander

We started the alpha about four weeks ago, but almost all of that time has been devoted to getting set up and preparing ourselves to do research and testing. In an alpha, it can feel like you’re not making progress if you’re not shaping prototypes or putting things in front of users, not running spikes or playing around with data. But it’s not true. All that setup work and extra exploration is useful. Nay, it’s necessary. When we were doing the alpha recurring payments on GOV.‌UK Pay, I remember there was a liminal period between discovery and alpha then too. In running, there’s the concept of ‘Zone X’, this moderate-intensity rut between easy pace and threshold pace. It exists to tell you to slow down when you really need to be going easy, or keep it steady before you need to really get faster. The start of an alpha phase is Zone X, moderate intensity. A bit quicker but not as fast as you’ll be going soon, and still productive. Zone X has culminated in us achieving decent milestones…