Ground-breaking products don’t just fall out of the sky. It takes years to bring a great idea to the marketplace.
Tech giants Sony and Philips needed a year of experimentation to publish the standard that would become the CD-ROM and two more years of development to release the product commercially in 1982. Apple took four years to release the beta version of the iPhone, followed by an additional three years of advancements before introducing it to the public.
During the years between conception and release, these items underwent a rigorous process of idea generation, ideation, prototyping, and more. It’s not magic. It’s the product development process. By following a similar approach as James Russel, Steve Jobs, and others, you can launch your new product idea with great success.
What is product development?
There’s no universal framework for developing new products. Numerous processes work in tandem to turn an idea into a market-viable product. For most product managers, new product development requires:
- Market analysis to validate customer demand
- Defining the product’s core value
- Establishing the product roadmap to guide development
- Developing the minimum viable product (MVP)
However, the development process is not a one-and-done event that concludes when an item launches into a new market. It is ongoing throughout the product life cycle, evolving the good or service based on user feedback and changing customer needs. After launch, the team may work on new features or develop updated versions.
Roles involved in product development
Along with the product manager, the new product process brings together a team of professionals skilled in:
- Design
- Engineering
- Manufacturing
- Product Marketing
- User interface (UI) development
- User experience (UX)
- Business analysis
Each role contributes essential skills to define, design, build, test, and deliver the product.
6 stages of product development
An innovation progresses through six stages before its launch, often called the New Product Development Process or Framework (NPD).
1. Ideation
At this product development stage, the team has a blank canvas. The product manager should lead them through a judgment-free brainstorming session. They’ll encourage members to remove their filters and put everything on the table, no matter how outlandish.
There are two approaches you can take. The first is to apply conscientious idea management to the process, guiding your team to develop a customer-driven roadmap by asking the following:
- What type of customer do you want to target?
- What customer problem are you trying to solve?
- Does the marketplace provide other products that solve the same problem?
- Are there gaps in how the competitors’ offerings address the issue?
- What function does your product need to include?
- What insights does the SWOT analysis or feasibility study uncover?
If you need to brainstorm new features for an existing product, use the SCAMPER model to guide you through a series of prompts to reimagine the product. Each letter of the acronym is a prompt. Here’s an example of the changes it might inspire:
- Substitute: Swap plastic components for polycarbonate to improve durability.
- Combine: Add a camera harness to a photography kit bag.
- Adapt: Change the color of a toy to catch more attention in store aisles.
- Modify: Make luggage more compact to fit within airline carry-on restrictions.
- Put to another use: Market stylish headphones as a fashion accessory.
- Eliminate: Get rid of the unused interface options in a program.
- Reverse/Rearrange: Instead of asking diners to pay after they eat, ask them to pay upfront for faster service.
2. Definition
Once the development team is excited about a concept, they may be tempted to jump straight to the product design phase. Resist that urge. You want to refine the product strategy before investing time and resources in the design. Begin by defining the following:
Success criteria
Establish the project’s success metrics early on to accurately measure and evaluate its impact. Consider adopting key performance metrics (KPIs), such as conversion rate and average order value, or establish customized goals that suit your industry and the product’s category.
Business analysis
Develop a comprehensive overview of the product’s distribution, marketing, and sales strategies to clearly define the product roadmap. Extensive competitor analysis is also required.
Unique selling proposition
Using a single, concise statement, define the problem your product intends to solve and why its value proposition is better than other options on the marketplace. Consider products outside your market sector. Your competition is anything that currently addresses or nearly addresses customer needs.
Marketing strategy
You don’t need to enumerate every detail at this stage, but you should direct the marketing team to start developing their product strategy. Discuss the merits of each marketing channel, existing campaigns you can leverage, and potential brand collaborations available to support the product launch.
Even if market strategy evolves during concept development, early consideration can ensure the product team monitors all the essential variables.
3. Prototyping
Next, begin crafting your product prototype. Whether market-ready or not, a sample will engage key stakeholders like the media and early adopters.
A working model of your idea puts you on track to develop a minimum viable product (MVP), often accelerating the product’s velocity. The initial prototype can be a set of detailed schematics, but you want to develop a trial version as soon as possible.
The prototyping phase usually prompts additional research and business plan refinements to address the following:
- Market risk research: Identify potential risks using a risk register before allocating development resources. Then, take steps to avoid or mitigate those risks should they occur. This can prevent product delays or – worse – failure.
- Product development strategy: Use various approaches, such as bottom-up estimation techniques, to plan task assignments and their milestones or timelines. Once complete, communicate the assignments to the team.
4. Initial Design
With the MVP in hand, it’s time to build an entire product mockup. The essential requirements needed to bring the initial design to life include:
Resources
Determine which resources the team should order and which to manufacture in-house. Then, source materials for physical products and establish relationships with manufacturers or other vendors.
For digital products, seek additional UX/UI design resources, select a server farm, or prepare your data infrastructure to accommodate the product. In addition, sign software monitoring and maintenance contracts to provide security. Finally, hire a cohort of beta testers for quality assurance.
Stakeholder updates
Consistent communication with the product team and other stakeholders will confirm the product is progressing in the right direction. Depending on the audience, distribute daily or weekly status updates to keep everyone informed and solicit approval.
The marketing team can repurpose your reports into external promotional material to build anticipation and excitement among the target market.
Feedback gathering
At a minimum, you should bring together senior managers and every available product stakeholder to generate product feedback. But you don’t have to stop there. You can organize a soft or beta launch to solicit customer reviews on the product’s functionality and user experience.
You can go one step further by providing early adopters with a survey to manage responses and generate constructive, actionable criticism.
5. Validation and testing
Even if you’ve had a successful design phase and garnered rave reviews for the MVP, the product requires rigorous validation and usability testing before its launch. Root out flaws in your product by completing the following:
Concept development testing
A functional prototype doesn’t necessarily mean the product is market-ready. During the concept development phase, you will likely identify issues – whether in features or marketing – that the team must resolve before the product’s launch. You may need software development or design revisions if introducing a digital product.
Once those are complete, ask internal team members to test product functionality, even if you completed a beta test during the initial design phase. You can also invite a new group to QA the features. This stage is critical, so don’t scrimp – test, test, test.
Front end testing
Test the front-end functionality, focusing on code risks, GDPR/data privacy compliance, and other consumer-facing faults. Double-check that the e-commerce platform is robust enough to manage demand.
Test Marketing
Conduct market research to validate your promotion strategy and associated tactics. Assess campaign optimization and categorization and ensure everything is ready for launch.
6. Commercialization
Finally, you’re ready to commercialize your idea and launch it publicly by implementing your go-to-market strategy. Commercialization requires:
Product manufacturing
After multiple prototype ideations, revisions, and updates, you can begin full-scale manufacturing of the physical product or software. Provide your team with the finalized and approved model and MVP iteration to ensure they work from the most up-to-date specifications.
E-commerce implementation
Test the “live” product’s functionality as you did with earlier front-end testing to ensure the digital components launch without a hitch.
Ongoing marketing
Think beyond the initial launch phase to consider how the product development group can continue to support ongoing marketing efforts. An effective product-led marketing campaign requires ongoing development and collaboration with the marketing team to ensure longevity in the marketplace.
5 benefits of using the product development process
Using the above framework for new product development produces the following benefits for the organization:
More collaboration
The process fosters alignment among the development team. With everyone on the same page, project management can offer more autonomy, allowing team members to operate quickly and independently without the risk of working at cross-purposes.
Lower risks
In the development process, a product roadmap accounts for competitive and market research and target audience needs. This helps you establish a strategic plan to address potential roadblocks ahead of time, saving time and resources.
Realistic goals
The process establishes a cadence to accomplish goals for each stage. It encourages the team to meet routinely to evaluate progress, address challenges, and remain on track.
Established success metrics
The development process embeds metrics into your product roadmap which detail how to measure and define success.
Boosted creativity
Establishing limits through planning and roadmapping results in creative guidance that helps the team innovate within boundaries without project management stifling the development process.
5 tips to boost your product development process
Although there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to launching a new product, the following tips will help you get the most from your development team.
- Clearly define the problem your product will solve using a single sentence. If you require paragraphs of information to sell your concept, you should return to the drawing board and reassess.
- Be honest about the thoroughness of your market research and user feedback results. You don’t gather this data to pat yourself on the back but to help your team refine the product’s original concept and turn it into something valuable for its target audience.
- Your company’s diverse workforce is a resource you can rely on to solve problems and upgrade your products. Encourage dialogue and feedback by sharing regular updates with other departments and engaging with comments.
- Use the right tools for the job. Sure, Excel is convenient, but if you want to generate a product development roadmap that illustrates the process, tracks progress, and ensures visibility through every level of the organization, you need a roadmapping application that visualizes the timeline and supports collaboration.
- Keep timelines realistic. Otherwise, you risk poor quality control, missed opportunities, and team burnout. Conduct check-ins with cross-functional teams through every product development stage to determine if your schedule is reasonable.
Improve your product development process with Tempo
Every organization’s product development process is unique. Let Tempo’s Strategic Roadmaps software illustrate your product’s path from idea generation to launch. The Jira-enabled application builds boardroom-ready roadmaps in minutes, allowing you to capture customer feedback, prioritize feature development, and communicate strategy.
Introducing innovative products to new markets is a breeze with Tempo thanks to intuitive interfaces designed for the entire team that allow them to present their plans confidently.
