Release · February 2026
When a variant is actually ready
“Ready” is a social word. In a product meeting it often means someone is tired of waiting. In the studio it means a short list of artefacts exists on paper, not in chat.
We keep the list deliberately unglamorous. If your team cannot produce these items, the variant is not late — it is undefined.
The paper we ask to see
Exposure definition. Who is eligible, who is assigned, who is actually shown the screen. Three sentences. If they collapse into one, you are not ready.
Metric window. Start rule, stop rule, and the late-event grace period. iOS and Android may differ. Write both.
Guardrails. At least one stability metric and one trust metric. Crash-free sessions and refund rate are common in our Bangkok cohorts. Vanity engagement is not a guardrail.
Cache note. What could still serve the old UI after assignment. If engineering shrugs, schedule week 3 of Signal Lab before you randomise anyone.
Kill rule. Who can stop the test, and on what threshold, without waiting for the next steering committee. A variant without a kill rule is a hope with a percentage attached.
Readiness is not significance
We have watched teams delay shipping a well-instrumented variant because p-values were “not there yet,” and ship a sloppy one because a dashboard turned green on day four. The checklist above is meant to interrupt both habits.
A variant can be ready and still lose. That is a successful experiment. A variant that ships without exposure proof is just a release wearing a lab coat.
For the live rehearsal of this list, see Signal Lab week 7. For calendar constraints particular to Thailand, read the cadence note.