---
title: Experiment Process Overview
description: "The order of steps for running a Statsig experiment, from sizing it with a power analysis through configuring, implementing, testing, launching, and reading results."
product: general
lang: en
token_estimate: 1133
---
# Experiment Process Overview

> For AI agents: a documentation index is available at [/llms.txt](/llms.txt). Append `.md` to any page URL for markdown, or send `Accept: text/markdown`.

Running an experiment on Statsig takes four kinds of work: sizing it, configuring it in the console, implementing it in your code, and checking it before and after you start. This page gives the order and links to the page that owns each step. If you'd rather follow one continuous tutorial that includes SDK setup, go to [Run your first experiment](https://docs.statsig.com/guides/abn-tests).

You don't need every step. A simple A/B test on an existing metric needs the create, configure, and implement steps; the planning and pre-launch checks matter more as the cost of a wrong result goes up.

## Before you create the experiment

| Step | What it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [Run a power analysis](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/power-analysis) | Estimate how much traffic and how many days the experiment needs to detect the effect you care about. Run it first, because its output sets the target duration you enter later. |
| [Choose a feature gate or an experiment](https://docs.statsig.com/guides/featureflags-or-experiments) | Decide whether you need to measure variant lift at all. A plain rollout doesn't need an experiment. |

## Create and configure

| Step | What it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [Create the experiment](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/create-new) | Name it, state the hypothesis, pick the randomization ID type, and choose whether it runs in its own layer. Covers user-level, device-level, custom ID, and isolated experiments. |
| [Configure the scorecard](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/setup/scorecard) | Record the hypothesis and choose the primary and secondary metrics that measure it. |
| [Set allocation and targeting](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/setup/allocation-and-targeting) | Choose how many eligible users enter the experiment and which users qualify. |
| [Define groups and parameters](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/setup/groups-and-parameters) | Name the variants and set the values your code reads. Do this before you start: group structure is frozen once the experiment runs. |
| [Review the analysis settings](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/setup/analysis-settings) | Set the target duration from your power analysis and choose the significance level Statsig applies to results. |

## Implement in your code

| Step | What it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [Implement the experiment](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/implementation/implement) | Read the experiment's parameters with `getExperiment`, log the events your scorecard metrics use, and test each variant in a lower environment. |
| [Read parameters, not group names](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/implementation/getting-group) | Why checking a group name in code is an anti-pattern, and what the diagnostics stream's rules mean. |

## Check before you start

| Step | What it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [Set overrides](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/setup/overrides) | Force yourself or specific users into each group to confirm every variant works during development. |
| [Review the quality score](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/setup/quality-score) | Catch setup gaps, such as a thin hypothesis, before the experiment starts collecting data. |

## After you start

| Step | What it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [Monitor the experiment](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/monitor) | Confirm assignment and logging are healthy: checks arriving, unit IDs matching, exposures balanced, no crossover. |
| [Read the results](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/interpreting-results/read-results) | Interpret exposures, the scorecard, and metric lifts once Statsig computes them. |
| [End the experiment](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/ending/ending-experiment) | Ship a group, stop assignments, conclude and defer, abandon, or reset. |

## Reference

| Page | What it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [Manage an experiment](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/manage) | The detail page's tabs and the actions menu: clone, rename, save as template, share, export, archive, and delete. |
| [Layers](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/layers-overview) | How layers let several experiments share a user population without overlapping. |
| [Holdouts](https://docs.statsig.com/experiments/holdouts-introduction) | How to keep a population out of all experiments to measure cumulative impact. |