How to Develop a Product: 7 Steps Guide with Examples
Bringing a fresh creation into existence often demands a substantial amount of dedication. Even when you possess a concept that holds promise for a specific market, the path to successfully introducing your product remains a puzzle to solve.
This challenge can be particularly daunting if you’re venturing into uncharted territory, lacking the knowledge of where exactly to begin. Nevertheless, there exists a roadmap for the journey of developing a new product — a tried-and-true approach that empowers you to transform your ideas into reality. In order to aid you in manifesting your vision, we will explore comprehensive insights into the product development process, accompanied by strategic techniques to enhance its outcome.
What is a Product Development Process?
Embarking on the journey of new product development encompasses a series of distinct phases, orchestrating the transformation of an idea into a market-ready marvel. This intricate process entails identifying a pressing market demand, delving into the competitive landscape, conceptualizing an innovative solution, devising a comprehensive product roadmap, crafting a minimum viable product, and venturing further into the depths of refinement.
While the genesis of this development process may stem from either a compelling idea or a keen market insight, the path forward remains grounded in a set of shared steps. This systematic approach plays a vital role in breaking down the multifaceted work into manageable tasks and orchestrating the collaborative efforts of experts hailing from diverse domains.
Who Takes Part in the Process?
Within the realm of new product development, product managers assume the crucial role of strategic catalysts, wielding the power to steer their company’s offerings toward triumph or defeat. Nevertheless, this process transcends the boundaries of mere product management. It necessitates the seamless collaboration and collective contributions of the following teams:
As the architects of the development journey, product managers spearhead the charge. They harmonize a diverse cross-functional team, articulating the overarching vision and strategies for the product through a meticulously crafted product roadmap. Moreover, they diligently monitor the team’s progress, ensuring that every step taken aligns with the intended trajectory.
Things to Consider Before Developing New Product
Before delving into the process of developing a new product, let us first explore some essential prerequisites that can save you valuable time and effort. It is crucial to thoroughly consider the following aspects before bringing your product to life:
- Market Viability: Does your product have a viable market? The size of the potential market will depend on the significance of the problem your product solves and how frequently this need arises. If your concept is driven primarily by an idea, it may require evangelizing the market to create demand and successfully sell the product.
- Reach and Delivery: How will your product reach its customers? Is there an existing method to transport and deliver the product to the target market, or will you need to think creatively and forge new distribution partnerships? Understanding the logistics of reaching your customers is vital for successful product deployment.
- Competitor Analysis: Who are your rivals in the market? Will your product face competition from existing players, making it essential to establish a stronger value proposition and invest significant efforts in customer acquisition? Competitors can indicate market demand, but alternatively, your product might be unique with limited direct competition, allowing you to focus on differentiating it from the industry standard.
By thoroughly addressing these considerations, you can lay a solid foundation for your product development journey, ensuring that your efforts are targeted, efficient, and tailored to meet the demands of your intended market.
7 Stages of New Product Development Process
While the product development process is often presented as a linear progression toward a definitive outcome, the reality is often more fluid and non-linear. The stages of developing a new product often unfold somewhat unordered, with frequent transitions between different phases.
Idea Generation:
The journey begins with the formulation of the initial product concept. Pinpointing the exact origin of this concept can be challenging, as inspiration may strike through an “aha” moment, a stimulating conversation, a piece of literature, or even a statistical observation.
Helpful Pointers:
The process of conceptualizing a product idea can take various forms. It involves a delicate balance of ideas, user feedback, insightful advice, and market insights, often necessitating a considerable amount of time. Taking notes along the way can aid in refining and defining the product concept in written form.
Key elements to include in these notes are the main features of the product, the user needs it aims to fulfill, and the target audience it caters to. It can also be beneficial to summarize the idea in a concise manner.
Brainstorming:
Organized brainstorming sessions serve as fertile ground for generating ideas. Throughout these sessions, it is crucial to take thorough notes and maintain an open mindset, as valuable insights can arise unexpectedly.
Pitching for Validation:
Sharing your product idea with others can prove invaluable in refining and enhancing its appeal and competitiveness. Feedback received during these pitches can prompt valuable advice and suggestions, allowing you to make your product more attractive to potential customers.
By embracing the fluid nature of the product development process and leveraging strategies such as idea generation, effective note-taking, brainstorming, and pitching for validation, you can navigate the complexities of bringing your product concept to life with greater clarity and purpose.
Market Research
Market research aims to quantify the scope and characteristics of a product’s demand. Although it’s a crucial exercise that financial partners frequently request, the product should be defined by something other than it.
Useful Tips
Online research: The majority of market research can be done online. Numerous market statistics are available from services like Statista, and Google searches will increase even more.
Changes: Keep in mind that things are constantly changing. Building a market hypothesis that modifies your market size estimates and reveals interesting market information about your product may be worthwhile.
Business Planning
The financial aspect of a product launch holds significant importance. While a comprehensive business plan may not always be necessary, it is essential to address all the economic factors associated with product creation and marketing.
During the product development process, developers will carefully assess the investments made thus far. This evaluation allows the team to gauge the financial implications and considerations involved. Subsequently, the team will define the parameters for the essential sales pipeline and associated expenses, ensuring a well-defined approach to revenue generation and cost management.
By recognizing the significance of the financial aspect and incorporating it into the business plan, you can effectively navigate the financial landscape of the product launch. This strategic approach ensures that all economic factors are considered, supporting informed decision-making and increasing the likelihood of a successful market entry.
Useful Tips
A valuable approach is to devise a comprehensive business plan encompassing two distinct stages: the product development phase and the subsequent launch phase. Each stage entails its own set of variables and may require different types of investments.
During the product development phase, costs may arise from conducting research, procuring reports and external expertise, as well as creating prototypes. These expenses need to be accounted for in the business plan, while the launch phase will determine the required investment amount.
In any business plan, it is crucial to include hypotheses that address the fundamental questions relevant to the venture. These hypotheses should be succinctly formulated and documented in writing to provide a clear framework for decision-making and evaluation.
Furthermore, an effective business plan incorporates the use of hypotheses as variables, allowing for simulations to be conducted. By treating these hypotheses as dynamic elements, the plan becomes more robust and adaptable to changing circumstances, enabling strategic analysis and informed decision-making.
By developing a comprehensive business plan that encompasses both the product development and launch phases, considering key hypotheses, and leveraging simulations, you can enhance the strategic planning process and increase the likelihood of success for your venture.
Prototyping
The prototype serves as the foundation for this phase, providing inspiration and a tangible representation of your product. While traditional prototypes are often physical in nature, it’s worth noting that digital mock-ups can also serve as effective prototypes for both physical and digital products.
Considered the final iteration of your product, the prototype, sometimes referred to as a beta version, plays a vital role in testing your usage hypotheses and presenting your product to potential investors and the market. It allows you to validate your ideas, gather feedback, and make necessary refinements before the official launch.
Whether it’s a physical prototype or a digital mock-up, the prototype serves as a crucial tool for showcasing your product’s capabilities, functionality, and potential to stakeholders. It provides an opportunity to engage with potential investors and customers, gauging their interest and collecting valuable insights that can inform further improvements.
By leveraging the power of prototypes, you can validate your product’s concept, refine its features, and generate interest among your target audience. This iterative process empowers you to make informed decisions, increase the market appeal of your product, and increase the chances of a successful market launch.
Useful Tips
While actively participating in the construction of the prototype is ideal, there may be instances where outsourcing becomes necessary due to the unavailability of specific equipment or supplies required for creating a physical prototype. In such cases, it is crucial to provide detailed technical specifications to ensure accurate execution of the prototype.
Another important aspect of the prototype development process is allowing others to test it. By giving others the opportunity to try the prototype, you enable them to experience firsthand the extensive knowledge and insights you possess about the product. This testing phase not only helps gather valuable feedback but also allows for spontaneous and informative responses from the testers.
By actively engaging in the prototype construction, or by providing precise technical specifications when outsourcing, you can ensure the accurate realization of your product concept. Moreover, by involving others in the testing process, you gain valuable perspectives and insights that contribute to further refinement and enhancement of the prototype. This collaborative approach strengthens the overall development process and increases the chances of creating a successful final product.
Testing
Testing is a crucial step in the product development journey as it allows you to gather valuable market feedback before your product is ready for sale. It can be an emotionally charged experience as it positions your product in the market and facilitates interactions with your initial group of customers.
While your product may still be a work in progress, your testing campaign plays a vital role in refining your sales pitch. By engaging with real users and collecting their reactions to the initial version of your product, you can gain insights into how to position it effectively in the market. These tests not only provide valuable feedback but also help shape your positioning strategy to maximize its appeal to potential customers.
Furthermore, testing can present an opportunity to generate revenue even before the product development cycle is complete. By accepting purchase orders for the upcoming product based on the positive responses from your test users, you can start earning revenue and validate the market demand for your offering.
By leveraging testing as a feedback-gathering mechanism, you can refine your product, strengthen your sales pitch, and even generate early revenue. This iterative approach enables you to make informed decisions, enhance your product-market fit, and increase the likelihood of a successful product launch.
Useful Tips
It is important to proceed through each phase of the product development process with a sense of urgency as if you have already reached the finish line. This involves thoroughly describing the target market and your product, showcasing a prototype, proposing a suitable pricing strategy, and actively generating interest from a diverse pool of potential early adopters.
Maintaining a swift pace is crucial during testing projects, as they come with predefined deadlines and specific objectives that need to be achieved. It is essential to stay on track and remain focused on the tasks at hand, ensuring that you keep up with the project timeline and deliverables.
By embracing a sense of urgency and prioritizing timely execution, you can effectively gather feedback, iterate on your product, and make necessary adjustments within the given time frame. This approach enables you to meet project milestones, fulfill objectives, and optimize the overall product development process.
Remember, keeping up with the pace is key to ensuring timely progress and maximizing the potential for success in testing and launching your product.
Product Development
Your prototype is complete, and when combined with what you learned from the crowdsourcing campaign, it should help you create the technical requirements. You should hire outside designers to supply the design specifications required for the finished product.
Useful Tips
Crafting more precise specifications can help minimize unexpected surprises during the product development process. If your product is physical and you are in this stage, you might consider subcontracting to an external company, possibly located in another country. In such cases, effective project management becomes pivotal for the success of the design and production process.
Preparing for the unexpected is crucial during this critical stage. As you navigate through various factors beyond your control, it is essential to anticipate and plan for unforeseen circumstances. By acknowledging the inherent risks and uncertainties, you can implement strategies to mitigate potential challenges and maintain progress.
Maintaining a buffer or reserve is prudent when scheduling the product launch. Allowing for some flexibility and accounting for unforeseen delays can help ensure a smoother and more resilient timeline. By incorporating additional time and resources into the schedule, you are better equipped to navigate unexpected obstacles without compromising the overall launch plan.
By embracing a proactive and contingency-driven approach, you can enhance your preparedness, minimize disruptions, and increase the likelihood of a successful product launch. Prioritizing precision, effective project management and flexibility will position you to handle unforeseen circumstances and achieve your goals with greater ease.
Commercialization
Ensuring successful sales and marketing for a new product is undoubtedly one of the most formidable challenges throughout the entire process. Although it may seem like a smaller phase in the product creation journey, having a well-defined go-to-market strategy is crucial for a successful product launch.
Furthermore, developing an effective pricing strategy becomes paramount, particularly when considering the novelty and uniqueness of the product within the broader marketing plan. Properly positioning the price of the product in relation to its value proposition and market competition is vital to attract and retaining customers.
By meticulously planning and executing the sales and marketing aspects of the product launch, businesses can generate awareness, create demand, and drive sales. Taking into account the product’s distinctive features, target audience, competitive landscape, and pricing considerations allow for a strategic approach that maximizes market penetration and customer engagement.
Useful Tips
During this stage, you will make critical decisions regarding your target market reach, pricing strategy for your new product, financial operations of your business, the structure of your conversion funnel, and the distribution method for delivering your product to end users. Additionally, you will determine the sales strategies and tactics that align with your objectives.
Flexibility is key during this process. It is essential to keep your plans adaptable and not overly rigid. By monitoring and evaluating the performance of different channels, you can invest more time and resources into the ones that yield the most success. This approach allows you to optimize your efforts and maximize returns by focusing on the channels that generate the best results.
Remaining open to adjustments and being willing to pivot based on data-driven insights will enable you to refine your strategies continuously. By staying attuned to the dynamic nature of your target market and being responsive to its needs, you can effectively adapt your approach and drive the growth and success of your business.
The simplest version of your product — a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) — should have just enough features to demonstrate the validity of your value claim. The Lean Startup author and founder of the startup MVP, Eric Reis, defines an MVP as:
“That iteration of a new product that makes it possible for a team to gather the most verified customer learning with the least amount of work.”
The minimum viable product (MVP) is a test to see if your target market will use your product.
It’s a straightforward approach that works incredibly well.
A Minimum Viable Product has these three critical features:
- People are willing to use or purchase it at first because it has enough value.
- It provides sufficient evidence of potential future benefits to keep early adopters.
- It offers a feedback loop to direct upcoming development.
An MVP’s development team will focus only on the absolute necessities and add additional features as they learn more about the needs and preferences of the target market through actual customer use.
User feedback plays a crucial role in the product development process, as it can lead to significant changes or even the abandonment of a project. It is essential to avoid wasting resources, such as time, money, and advertising, on a product that fails to meet the needs, wants, or enjoyment of users.
The key focus during product development is on learning and gathering data from validated customers. Instead of relying on surveys or forecasts to prove marketing hypotheses, observing users’ actual usage of the product provides more reliable insights. One common mistake is launching a product that falls far below users’ expectations, jeopardizing its viability in the market.
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach is often effective, especially for technical products with users who are actively engaged and eager to provide valuable suggestions for improvements and updates. This iterative approach allows for continuous refinement based on user feedback, ensuring that the product meets and exceeds user expectations.
By placing a strong emphasis on user feedback, learning from validated customers, and embracing an iterative development process, product teams can increase the chances of creating a successful product that resonates with its intended audience.
Best Practices for Successful Product Development
Most businesses that consistently deliver successful products to the market share certain strategies, even though their specific approaches may differ. Some of these recommended methods for creating new products are listed below:
- Consider your users’ needs and frustrations as you begin.
- Utilize market analysis and user feedback. (Don’t innovate in a vacuum).
- In your company, frequently communicate-exchange information and insights.
- Use one of the numerous frameworks available for your product development process. (A system must be in place before you attempt to develop.)
- As early in the process as possible, validate your product concepts. Before a product’s general public release, you may conduct a “soft launch” to test it out on many early adopters.
- During the ideation and brainstorming phases, involve your cross-functional team. You can glean great market information from a variety of sources.
- Plan out a reasonable timetable for development.
- Concentrate only on concepts your organization has the resources and know-how to implement.
Product Development Examples and Why They Work
The journey of bringing a product from its initial idea to its release is riddled with challenges, including the risks of ineffective task and priority management and a limited understanding of customer needs. Throughout history, numerous instances illustrate the perils that can arise during the product development process, from Betamax to Google Glass, highlighting the importance of navigating these pitfalls successfully.
However, with a robust product development strategy in place, you can significantly minimize the likelihood of encountering these complications. Examining various examples of product development across different industries provides a valuable glimpse into the overall process. Observing the product development life cycle in action and drawing insights from the accomplishments of other businesses becomes crucial for obtaining a broader perspective and learning from their successes.
By studying the experiences of diverse companies and industries, you gain valuable knowledge and insights that can inform and shape your own product development journey. Learning from others’ achievements and leveraging their strategies can help you navigate the complexities of the process more effectively and increase your chances of delivering a successful product to the market.
Dropbox
Drawing from valuable insights derived from usage data, Dropbox has undergone a remarkable transformation from its origins as a file-sharing service to a comprehensive organizational tool tailored for team collaboration. Initially, Dropbox sought to streamline the process of sharing information among individuals through its peer-to-peer platform.
Features such as version history, folder management, and admin rights were initially designed for single-user functionality. However, as customers began utilizing Dropbox to collaborate with their teams, these features naturally expanded and evolved to cater to the growing demand for collaborative capabilities. Recognizing the need for collaborative documentation, Dropbox introduced Dropbox Paper, a feature that emerged as a result of their team’s astute observation and understanding of user requirements.
By keenly observing user behavior and adapting its platform accordingly, Dropbox has successfully transformed into a versatile and indispensable tool for teams. Their evolution demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement and the ability to identify and address emerging needs in the realm of collaborative work.
Netflix
Netflix initially established itself as a DVD rental service, showcasing its early business model. However, their journey toward becoming one of the most prominent over-the-top (OTT) platforms exemplifies their remarkable adaptability to evolving market demands. Netflix’s transition from physical DVD rentals to streaming media epitomizes its ability to pivot according to the changing needs of its audience. Furthermore, their strategic shift from solely licensing pre-existing content to becoming a creator of original programming demonstrates their deep understanding of user expectations within the realm of OTT streaming services.
Throughout its growth, Netflix has consistently identified market needs and developed corresponding products to fulfill them. Their decision-making process revolves around comprehensive user insights, whether it be facilitating easy access to DVDs in the early stages or introducing personalized account profiles and on-demand streaming in the present era. Each update and innovation has contributed to their gradual price increases, aligning with their ongoing commitment to enhancing the value they deliver to their subscribers.
Netflix’s remarkable journey showcases its agility and adaptability in navigating the dynamic landscape of media consumption. By closely aligning their offerings with user preferences, they have successfully evolved from a DVD rental service to an influential player in the OTT streaming industry, solidifying their position through strategic decisions and continuous innovation.
Houseparty
Houseparty, a social media app focused on facilitating in-person interactions, exemplifies the gradual evolution of products. As the platform expanded and transformed into a tool for connecting individuals and small groups, Houseparty recognized the need to enhance user engagement. To pinpoint areas where users encountered difficulties, Houseparty leveraged the power of Taplytics to conduct A/B tests and usage experiments.
Through these experiments, Houseparty gained invaluable insights into the factors that contributed to a decline in user engagement and identified an opportunity to modify its onboarding process. By making minor adjustments to the onboarding procedure, they witnessed notable improvements in key app usage metrics, including:
- A 15% increase in user contact permission, indicates a greater willingness among users to grant access to their contacts.
- A 9% increase in push notification opt-ins, suggesting a higher level of user engagement and interest in receiving notifications.
These positive outcomes underscore the significance of refining the onboarding experience and demonstrate how data-driven experimentation can lead to significant enhancements in user engagement and overall app performance. Houseparty’s journey serves as a testament to the iterative nature of product development and the value of leveraging user insights to drive continuous improvement
Conclusion
We’ve looked at the key stages of a new product development process, but the more crucial steps can change depending on the type of product you’re creating and where it came from. If you have a breakthrough idea that needs to be brought to market, or have you identified a market niche to establish a brand, just contact us, a free consultation is available.
Originally published at https://stfalcon.com.
