Of the tech businesses surveyed by Statista, 29% intended to concentrate on developing new products when COVID-19 became a problem. The pandemic’s days are long gone. Some IT businesses concentrated on introducing new products, while others made improvements to their current line of digital goods.
The key to the success of new product development is straightforward: concentrate on product discovery and target audience pain areas. For this reason, obtaining consumer insights via surveys, interviews, social media interaction monitoring, and ethnographic research is crucial.
Furthermore, finding new products needs to be a continuous activity. It ought to go through all of the phases of product development life cycle, including idea generation, idea validation, pre-launch, and post-launch validation of the proof of concept and prototype. Stated differently, product development ought to persist over the duration of the product’s existence.
Product Development: What Is It?
Product development is the entire process of bringing a product from concept to market. It also covers the process of bringing an outdated product to a new market or revitalizing an established one. This comprises determining the market’s needs, developing a product roadmap, conceiving the product, releasing the product, and gathering user feedback.
Developing a new product from the ground up and introducing it to the market is known as new product development or NPD. The process remains ongoing until the conclusion of the product life cycle. After the product is launched, which you created or a software product development service, you may continue the process by gathering customer input, making changes to the product, and creating new versions.
Product Management vs. Product Development
There are significant differences between product development and product management, and it’s important to understand those differences.
Your go-to-market strategy’s plans and tactics are guided by product management. Their responsibilities include doing customer research to obtain information from your target market, translating customer needs into product upgrades, and making sure the product stays at the top of its class throughout its existence.
Product development uses product managers’ guidance and insights to produce new products that more effectively address consumer needs.
Steps to Creating a Product Development Plan
By developing a product development plan, you can construct a thorough roadmap of the work required to keep your team focused and on track. To construct a coherent product development strategy, five essential phases need to be followed:
Decide on Your Approach and Goals
Make sure your goals for this stage of product development are in line with the overarching goals of the company.
Select a Suitable Roadmap Structure
There are two primary frameworks for development roadmaps: waterfall roadmaps and agile roadmaps. A waterfall roadmap will work well if your development method is more conventional. Using an agile roadmap to facilitate collaboration is recommended in an agile startup setting.
Describe the Procedure Used in Product Development
Draw up the steps needed to complete the aforementioned phases. Consider the labor involved in developing your product’s features, including the design, testing, and other stages.
Ascertain Project Owners and Stakeholders
Of course, agreeing on who should be in charge of what is necessary is just as important as knowing what has to be done. Project owners should align themselves with your development roadmap to ensure that no details are being overlooked.
Take Notes and Make Adjustments
As with your product, using an iterative review process to update your roadmap as circumstances change can assist in ensuring that it remains current and valuable as you proceed with development.
Steps to Successful Product Development
Let’s take a brief moment to discuss the necessary members of your product development team before we go into the new product development process.
Incorporating the appropriate stakeholders is crucial during the process of product development to guarantee the creation of a viable product. Technical experts, for instance, can tell you whether or not it’s feasible to meet client expectations, even while market research can provide you with insight into what consumers want and need. In a similar vein, your finance team can assist you in comprehending the costs associated with delivery, continuous development, and manufacturing; compare your expenses to projected earnings to see whether there is a chance.
Utilize qualitative and quantitative market research as well to obtain the most precise feedback from your target audience and clients. This type of information will assist you in creating items that consistently satisfy consumer demands.
Ultimately, to guarantee that you come up with a fantastic, marketable, and financially solid product concept, the product development process needs input from different individuals within the firm.
How many steps are typically in the new product development process? For each team, this number may be different, on average, from 6 to 9 steps.
Let’s now examine the many product development phases:
Ideation and Research
Kicking off a new product starts with identifying a potential customer’s struggle or desire. Spend time getting to know who you want to serve and what would truly make their lives better. Listen to their stories, frustrations, and wishes so you can come up with ideas on how to help. Do broad research to understand what else exists out there, too.
The goal is to develop a concept that’s based on real insights from the people you aim to reach. Make sure your team keeps asking – how can we create something our customers will love and want to use? Staying grounded in their needs through ongoing dialogue and testing is crucial for bringing ideas to life that resonate in the real world.
Concept Development and Feasibility Analysis
The next step after an idea is real is to develop the concept to a stage where it can be a finished product. Take a closer look at what consumers are driven by and what, based on the available resources, can be considered feasible. Make low-fidelity mockups, observe how users interact with them, gather feedback, and discuss multiple possibilities.
Product Design and Engineering
In case the idea is considered viable, the team moves to the design and engineering stage. Here, the product’s attributes, characteristics, and usability are carefully thought out and developed. Product designers and engineers work hand in hand to come up with the specifications, layouts, and models. This stage may require several rounds of design, prototyping, and evaluation to ensure that the product is developed to the required standards and is user-friendly.
Development and Testing
After the planning and designing stage, comes the actual construction of the product which is always fun. The engineers and developers work on coding, wiring, and assembling of all the components. Oh, it is quite fascinating to see the sketches and discussions turn into a real and working prototype. This phase also includes a great deal of rigorous testing to iron out all the problems and glitches. Both QA professionals and end-users run through several iterations to find any bugs or anything that will leave people confused.
Manufacturing and Production
In the case of tangible goods, the manufacturing and production process is a critical phase. This stage entails the selection of the right manufacturing partners, the supply chain management and supervising the manufacturing process. Measures of quality assurance are put in place to ensure that the quality of the output is always high. In the case of digital products like software or mobile applications, this stage may entail the implementation of the product in various platforms and compatibility with other systems or structures.
Marketing and Launch
As the product is now ready for sale, attention turns to marketing and promotional strategies. A marketing strategy is created that aims to reach the right audience through social media, advertising and influencers. Publicity campaigns such as product launches, product release announcements and other promotional activities are well-planned to create awareness and demand for the new product.
Post-Launch Support and Continuous Improvement
Even after a successful product launch, the journey does not end. Companies must provide ongoing support, address customer feedback, and continuously improve the product based on real-world usage data and emerging market trends.
What is the final step in the product development process?
This stage involves monitoring product performance, gathering user insights, and implementing updates, bug fixes, and new features to enhance the overall user experience and maintain a competitive edge in the market.
Throughout the product development process, collaboration, communication, and agility are key factors for success. Using Agile and Scrum processes, a varied mix of product managers, designers, engineers, marketers, and other team members work together. Retrospectives, code reviews, and sprint meetings all aid in keeping the goal in mind, incorporating new needs, and reflecting on both successes and failures.
Methods for Creating New Products
Once you have a firm grasp on the process and product development stages, refine it by putting these recommended techniques into practice:
- Remember the consumer; they are the ones who create the market for your product. Even if the idea is brilliant, the product must meet the expectations of the target demographic in order to be successful.
- Be receptive to new ideas; discuss ideas with your coworkers and work together to develop the product. Product development and promotion require teamwork. Encourage people to contribute their knowledge and ideas to ensure a smoother, more interesting launch.
- Don’t overthink things; if your company is already well-established, you have a reputation and product to maintain in the market. Make items that appeal to your target market and that you can produce with the staff and resources at your disposal.
These recommendations should help you improve your product and release it better.
Obstacles that Teams Face During the Creation of New Products
Good tools can ease the difficulties associated with product development steps. Your team may be able to maintain a successful launch by being aware of these obstacles and knowing how to overcome them.
1. Outlining Precise Specifications
The standards frequently become a set of unwavering guidelines when speed is crucial. Agile teams need to have a common knowledge of and empathy for the client, in addition to having clear criteria. Participate with different team members in requirements-gathering exercises, such as client interviews. When QA, developers, and designers are all familiar with user stories, they may work together to create outcomes more rapidly and precisely without avoiding strict guidelines.
Using Confluence‘s requirements template, you may collaboratively document and change assumptions, use cases, UX design, and scope.
2. Calculating the Amount of Work Required for Development
Gaining a competitive edge and launching new items into the market requires adhering to reasonable project timeframes. However, estimating work in product development is notoriously hard, and developing new products can be considerably more challenging. To get more precise estimations, divide the job into smaller pieces. Smaller jobs not only allow you greater flexibility in allocating resources, but they also lessen the impact that unexpected delays will have on your project as a whole.
Story points, which quantify the amount of work teams must put in to complete a user story, have replaced conventional estimates in many Agile teams. A well-informed description of a feature from the user’s viewpoint is called a user narrative. Agile teams use Microsoft Project to reflect, keep track of story points, and swiftly adjust estimates.
3. Tools in Silos
Collaboration is essential for your team’s and their goods’ success. Development teams utilize a range of specialized technologies, including instant messaging applications to facilitate team conversations and graphic design tools to create mock-ups. A single tool cannot meet the specific feature requirements of the development team in its entirety. To quickly gather and include crucial data, Nifty provides an all-in-one solution for project management, team collaboration, and communication. It offers a centralized workspace where teams can seamlessly plan, track, and execute projects.
What Product Development Process Examples Are There in the Real World?
The founders of Airbnb lacked capital and a business plan, but they had a gut feeling about one of the most crucial aspects of successful product development: testing your idea before moving forward with production.
Airbnb
They posted the specifics of their apartment online and made it available for short-term rentals to test their concept for peer-to-peer rental accommodation. They realized they had a good product concept when a number of users signed up to stay at the founders’ house.
Lyft
The ridesharing company Lyft advanced its product development process by refining its technology infrastructure and assessing user demands. Although its software had many issues in its early iterations, it improved its functioning by adding features that were focused on the needs of the user and correcting bugs through an iterative product development method. In response to consumers’ worries over pricing transparency, for instance, it implemented a price estimator function, which was swiftly embraced by its users.
Crystal Pepsi
When PepsiCo unveiled Crystal Pepsi, a new beverage they touted as healthier than their other soft drinks, they committed a grave error. Prior to launching their concept on the market, the firm was unable to validate it. Pepsi’s management was caught off guard when their full-scale introduction of Crystal Pepsi proved to be a flop because they had not utilized a soft launch to verify the product with early adopters or gathered enough early input from their target customers.
Canva
Canva’s user-friendly online design tool completely changed the graphic design industry. Canva’s product development strategy began with determining that complex graphic creation tools were a glaring customer pain point. They created a straightforward and user-friendly product prototype, fully tested it with consumers, and made revisions in response to their comments. They are able to introduce new templates and features and continuously enhance their service because of their post-launch ongoing review and iteration. Canva is a prime illustration of a successful product development process because of its ongoing evolution in response to user requests.
Conclusion
As you can see, creating a new product requires a lot of work and time. Even worse, the majority of it is genuinely devoted to planning, strategy, and early research. We do not, however, suggest that you bypass these product development stages. Speed is obviously crucial for any company. However, the majority of failing businesses do point to a lack of planning as their main cause. Investing additional time in ideation, research, and determining the ideal product-market fit is preferable to having your product become one of the 66% that fails within the first two years after release.
The keys to developing new products are effectively studying, iterating, and—above all—remembering to listen to your consumers at every step of the way.
