The minute you discover a new product that matches your interests, you will be encouraged to utilize a similar product development process for your business. If we talk from a startup perspective, most budding entrepreneurs take such unapt decisions when they launch one product after another just to end up with disappointing results.
“A software product is not just a source of revenue for a business but also an epitome of consumers’ preferences.”
Right from Ideating & conceptualizing a product idea to its testing & launch, a cycle of a product development process encircles multiple stages & strategies implemented to ensure its success.
While the rate of new product failures varies between 80-90%, every startup or SME planning to go ahead with product development must ponder over a strategic approach to do so. After all, the process of building a new product from scratch demands initial brainstorming, a lot of research work, strategic planning, resources required for UX designs, development, testing, deployment, marketing, maintenance, & more.
Have you heard about human-centered product design earlier? Take a moment go through this blog to know more about such product designs in detail!
No matter if you’re a well-known company developing a product or just a beginner working individually on a big project, there is always a chance of common mistakes that most young product development enthusiasts make in the beginning phase of their careers.
Key stages of the new product development process
- Brainstorming Ideas
- Market research & analysis
- Planning & Execution
- Creating Prototypes
- Design Testing
- Product Development
- Product launch & marketing
As mentioned earlier in the topic, every expert at any product development company needs to outline a fruitful strategy to stay productive in the process with high possibilities of succeeding with the desired end results.
Just think of the moment when you’re all set to share your project proposal but your client is dilemmatic about the success of the product. What will be your next step to gain your client’s trust or strategy to bring up their confidence?
No, you don’t need to do guesswork, a simple research & market analysis will be adequate to work for you. All you have to do is to follow these steps to get started with the product development process:
1. Brainstorming Ideas
The very first step to initiating the process of product development involves ideation that makes you brainstorm the idea/s that reflect your business objectives & interests of the targeted audience.
It’s a matter of fact that a product idea that resolves existing problems of customers is most likely to achieve the desired outcomes. Many startups often succeed to come up with innovative ideas for product development as they’re most likely to conceive innovative ideas on the basis of customers’ needs & market trends.
Suppose, if you’re planning to launch an online shopping app then competition will be high as there is already a bunch of similar eCommerce apps available in the marketplace. Even if you’re a beauty brand, your idea must reflect how your software product stands out from others & why customers must choose it over others.
Therefore, you must brainstorm a user-centric product idea that touches the ‘pain points’ of your target audience. Ideation is a core element of a product development process that every business leader must prioritize in the early stage.
2. Market research & analysis
Once you’re done with product discovery & ideation, the next stage of the product development process demands in-depth research to chalk out the market scenario in your mind.
Although your beauty brand holds a good reputation in the market, you always need to explore your industry as well as ongoing market trends to know exactly what your competitors doing to retain their customers & what’s their strategy to strengthen their brand presence.
With market & competitor analysis, your team can make the most out of their product development expertise & efforts in crafting unique & useful software products to benefit your business. Here are some perks of conducting thorough market research.
- In getting familiar with the deep sentiments of customers & understanding where your product stands among the existing brands.
- To discover the opportunities where your product can dominate the market of competitors as customers keep on searching for alternatives of a product or service that offers more benefits at the same costs.
- In gathering feedback from customers on the basis of research work done prior to turning your ideas into reality. All the insights derived from the market analysis will guide to the right direction of the product development process & dissolve all possibilities of app failures in the future.
- To get a clear understanding of customers’ preferences, what they like, & their opinions towards your brand or service via survey tools such as Lucky Orange.
3. Planning & Execution
The third stage is planning, where you formulate a final product idea/definition based on your initial idea and research and begin coming up with your plans to bring it to life.
When you define your final product, you’ll want to begin planning what you’ll need in order to create it. For example, if you’re creating a physical product, you’ll need to source the necessary materials or find production partners that will assist in manufacturing.
Planning also involves coming up with a marketing strategy that will help you effectively market when your product is completed, pricing models that make sense for your product, and that your customers will pay.
It’s also critical to identify the teams that will be involved in your product development process that will help bring it to market, from the marketing teams that will promote your product to any possible external partners that will assist with production.
4. Creating Prototypes
The stage of prototyping comes up once you’re set to start your product development process with a robust plan & a strategic approach. Almost every project in our portfolio of featured products & app solutions has gone through a stage of prototyping that acts as a sample product or a mockup to showcase the initial version of your product.
Somewhere & somehow, a prototype is similar to MVP i.e Minimum Viable product that demonstrates the key features & functionalities of a product so that you can get an idea of how your app will perform & look.
Once a client approves a clickable prototype, you can move further to the next stage which takes your actions to find out how your potential customers are reacting to your product.
5. Design Testing
Before you start coding your app or software, you need to testify its capability to survive in the market & solve the problems of its potential users. So, during this stage, you’ll share your prototypes with target audiences and ask for actionable feedback on how the product works.
Essentially, you want your product to be used in situations that are similar to real-world use cases so you know exactly what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes the results of your testing will require you to go back and make changes to your prototype, as mentioned above.
Once you feel as though your prototype is finished and ready to solve your customer needs, you’ll begin product development.
6. Product Development
Now it’s time to step into the product development stage that marks error-less coding after testing your MVP.
In this stage of our guide to mobile app development, developers will give a final touch to the prototype finalized by the client after rigorous analysis & MVP testing. From pin-point changes to major add-ons, this typical stage is a crucial part of the product development process as it gives us the final product.
The tasks covered in this product development stage are centered on the insights of customer feedback & changes requested by the client in the feedback. Needless to say, all modifications in the earlier version of a new product are done by the concerned team of programmers who follow a quality-driven approach to cutting-edge product development.
7. Product launch & marketing
The last stage of the new product development process revolves around the promotional aspects. You just can’t introduce your product or service all of a sudden, you have to create some buzz or run promotional campaigns to leave your customers wondering about what’s coming next.
Always remember that the first impression is the last impression & you need to nail it without leaving any stone unturned! All you have to do is to strategize with a result-driven marketing plan to aware audience of your new product launch.
Once your product launch story gains momentum in the market, customers & big brands will steer towards your product right from the very first day. While outlining your campaign highlights, make sure that you’ve got a strategy to encourage customers to share their feedback & reviews so that you can improve your products accordingly.
Finally, your new product development process has reached its endpoint. Good Luck!
Nothing is more satisfying than observing your ideas turning into a product as imagined. Nonetheless, the journey from product ideation to project execution has been so challenging yet rewarding not only for the experts involved in the process but also for the client they worked for.
And it’s doubtless to say that the moment you end up with the new product development process, you’re all set to roll out your brand new app or product that will make its first-ever appearance in the market segment. If you have an idea in mind & can’t decide if it’s feasible or not then Hie HQ is here to help! We’re a squad of smart, talented, & professional business strategists and experts who love innovations, technologies, designing, & coding with efforts beyond limit.
Contact us to find out more!
FAQs
1. What are the most effective strategies for improving the product development process?
Five major tips to boost your product development process are as follows:
- Outline a workflow
- Clear your existing backlog
- Execute tasks completely
- Monitor your ‘work in progress’ WIP or ongoing tasks
- Mark your project progress at any step
2. Are there any challenges in the product development process?
There is a long list of tasks mounting to a series of challenges in the product development process. Here are they:
- Ideation, market viability, feasibility, & product roadmap problems
- Workflow management, product engineering issues
- Pricing policy, time-to-market, bugs & technical issues.
