FINISHED - Golden Platform Channel Partner Interview

Date

July 2022

Goal

During our internal discovery we identified key topics that we wanted to further explore with our Channel Partners through interviews. We wanted to discover how our Channel Partners use platformOS nowadays, and what the Golden Platform means for them. We also wanted to learn about their previous module experiences as it relates to community experiences, documentation usage, and onboarding processes.

Method

We ran semi-structured interviews with five Channel Partners.

Results

As a result, we created an affinity map by adding the interview participants’ thoughts on post-its and identified the corresponding clusters to identify what were the critical topics for them.

• For the Channel Partners, a standardized platformOS framework means a unified, optimized, flexible best practice collection. Standards are not only for the current community - it can also support newcomers to have a better understanding of how platformOS works.
• Related to learning how to use the platform; Channel Partners shared that although the system was built well, it has too many options. Because of that flexibility, the learning curve is more complex than expected.
• What helped the Channel Partners to learn the platformOS best practices are the example videos from the platformOS team. After that, as our documentation evolved, it became a critical resource for devs to learn how to use the system.
• Channel Partners also shared that modules should be straightforward to manage, which means flexible, reusable, maintainable, and highly performant.
• Based on the Channel Partner interviews the community and market opportunities come hand in hand; by helping each other the broader market opportunities are expanded for the whole community.
• Channel Partners shared that related to the current pOS modules they like the mechanism of the version uploads and the changelog.
• We also wanted to learn about what the Golden Platform means for Channel Partners.
  • The Golden Platform is the collection of standards on how to build on platformOS.
  • All responses highlighted that these standards don’t need a separate branding, they are integral to platformOS itself.
  • The standards can have a name (different as Golden Platform), representing the way of doing things. Golden Platform feels more of a destination than a pathway.
• As a critical point it emerged that user research resources should themselves be part of the best practices.