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In agile, validation should be done whenever needed — whether for a whole new product, or a set of features.
It’s easy to think that our ideas are the right ones, but overconfidence leads to unusable, unfeasible, valueless products.
The goal of validation is to ensure that the idea(s) have a promising impact if fully implemented, before resources are diverted towards that goal.
The team needs to test assumptions made during previous stages, and verify if the idea is indeed worthwhile to work on.
Validation work is largely user-led. They are the most relevant sources of truth that will impact product success.
Validation results during an iteration only holds up for so long. The market is constantly changing, users constantly want different things, and competitors are constantly changing their strategies. So you need to be constantly re-evaluating your ideas, and ensuring your course is still correct.
Keep a pulse on important signals — why did sales dip this quarter? Why did a feature get less usage? Keep an internal dashboard to track these core signals (which we’ll talk all about in ‣ ).
Market maturity is linerarly related with the cadence of validation tests. i.e., the more mature a market, the longer in between validation tests you should tolerate.