Speed is not velocity, but this does not mean that speed is not important. In fact, speed is a prerequisite for velocity: without speed, there can be no velocity. We cannot be moving in the right direction if we are standing still. This might seem too obvious to even mention…

There is a popular meme which is used as a response to “useless” meetings: “this meeting could have been an email”. I think replacing meetings with emails would be a good start, but replacing it with a wiki page would in many cases be even better. Replacing a meeting with…

“Won’t running all those experiments slow down our product development?” When speaking at conferences, I get this question a lot. And my answer is always the same: yes and no. Let me explain. There is a difference between “speed” and “velocity”. Speed is how fast something is going, while velocity…

Three things I wanted to experience in my next job — One month ago, I started a new job. I left a place I love to go exploring. After eight years of following a clear path, I was ready to be left to my own devices and seek out a new course. What came after was to choose the next step…

Research and experimentation are the “peanut butter and jelly” of customer insights — here’s why — Written by Molly Stevens and Lukas Vermeer. User research and experimentation are both powerful tools that allow us to narrow down and select product options. Each tool has a range of core capabilities that ensure our customers have great experiences and the business reaches their goals. At Booking.com, our teams…

FOMO made me do it — At the end of this month, I will be leaving the company where I have spent the past eight amazing years. I am not sure I can adequately explain my motivation (decisions of this nature rarely have a single cause) but I will try. Not all decisions in life can…

Kickstarting and keeping the A/B testing momentum — Written by Aleksander Fabijan (Mircosoft), Benjamin Arai (Microsoft), Pavel Dmitriev (Outreach.io, and Lukas Vermeer (Booking.com). Originally published on the Microsoft Experimentation Platform blog. At the time when we published the Experimentation Evolution Model in 2017 [1], we never expected such an interest in it. Practitioners from hundreds of companies and…

How I learnt to stop worrying and made the inbox-as-to-do-list approach work for me. — I know. I know. I know! Using my inbox as my to-do-list is considered bad practice, and I should feel bad for even trying. Several well known time management books explicitly advise against this approach. Based on this advice, I have tried different tools and techniques to create a to-do-list…

Mediation Analysis to Disentangle Direct and Indirect Effects — Written by: Tolga Oztan, Zoe van Havre, Chad A Davis and Lukas Vermeer. At Booking.com, one of the key ingredients to customer-centric product development isn’t just bright minds having great ideas, but collecting the evidence to support these ideas. We test each idea addressing a customer pain point via an…