Why should companies bother about product development? According to McKinsey, over 25% of industry revenue and earnings come from the new product's launch. There's no certainty that your digital product development strategies will be successful. For instance, research discovers that for every 7 product concepts, only 1.5 ideas roll out, and one gets to succeed.
A well-established company with committed product managers is the key to having an optimized product development process. It can provide enhanced financial benefits, which means a product manager can raise profits by 34.2% while working at his optimum level.
So, what is the product development process? It refers to the steps and regulations needed to take a product from an idea to market availability. Product development includes the introductory stages to find out market research and validation needs, thinking of a solution, lifecycle of product development, gathering feedback, and more.
From ideation to execution, product development involves several steps.
Let's discuss everything in detail!
Product Development Lifecycle - The 6 Stages
The product development process helps streamline a launch and boosts cross-functional collaboration with communication and teamwork at the process's forefront. Let's dig into the product lifecycle stages, which can help launch your following digital product.
- Ideation
The primary stage of product lifecycle management starts by creating novel product ideas. It's known as the product innovation stage, where you must brainstorm product concepts regarding concept testing, customer requirements, and market research.
It would be good to consider the factors, including target market, existing products, functionality, SWOT assessment, and SCAMPER method, while kick-starting a new product concept. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers study, approx 45% of inner creativity belongs to the company's employees.
2. Product definition
Once you have identified your target market and understand product functionality, it's time to focus on the product. It's a concept or scoping development concentrating on rectifying the product strategy.
During this critical stage, you must define the specifics, such as business analysis, success metrics, value proposition, and marketing strategy. Once these concepts have been clarified, it's time to start developing your minimum viable product (Mvp) with first prototyping.
3. Prototyping
While having a detailed plan, you may create a prototype or a product sample. The significance is to observe how your notion translates into robust reality. Hiring a professional for rapid prototyping is crucial to ensure the prototype realizes your idea.
4. Elementary design
During the elementary phase, project stakeholders work closely to create a product mockup regarding the MVP prototype. To create a basic design, you must source materials, link with stakeholders, and get elementary feedback. When you get design approval, the next phase is validation for final evaluation before launching the product.
5. Validation and testing
Validation and testing are crucial before going live with a new product. It makes sure every part of the product, from ideation to execution, is working efficiently. You must ensure product quality by implementing concept development & testing, front-end testing, and test marketing.
6. Commercialization
The time has come to commercialize your product concept, which includes rolling out your product and implementing it on the site. Your development and advertising strategy have now undergone quality testing and the final layout. Your last iteration should give you a sense of satisfaction, and you must be prepared to create the finished item.
This stage involves product development and eCommerce implementation. Once the product is launched, measure the success of digital product development with the elementary success metrics.
Benefits of Product Development for Businesses
NPD, aka new product development, is the primary process of bringing an original product idea to market. Therefore, agile methodologies in product development help you retain the market's competitive edge while balancing the difficulty and necessity. These are the top benefits of product development for businesses:
Save cash
Fundera reported that approx 20% of new businesses fail within a year. It happens due to improper market research, economically durable business models, and incompetence. You may adjust the concept to suit the requirements of consumers or completely abandon it to save both time and resources by determining the efficacy of new items in the NPD process before they become available in the market.
For example, while considering Uber the leading ride-sharing service provider, it was always different from this! They began with an attractive product lifecycle management strategy, which made them into the creative company they are now.
Uber started by closing a gap in the taxi industry by making a hassle-free ride-hailing process with untangled payment processing. They kept innovating their product portfolio by generating ride tiers from lavish to affordable.
Reinforce and formalize the concept development process.
Like a new business, you must define the product concept at the start of the product development stage. Here you must follow these typical stages:
- Senior employees or other corporate stakeholders are presented with a product idea.
- According to its viability, the macro proposal is either accepted or rejected.
- The product is then submitted for modification into different product ideas, frequently spreading to target various populations if it is accepted.
Essential Success Drivers in Product Development
Most high-tech companies' sole purpose for surviving is to create lucrative new items. They thrive because of inventiveness; they can quickly gain steam with the next big idea to build on a first-round win. These are the vital success drivers in product development:
Speed is important
Speed is essential, but not at the price of operational quality or clear objectives. Allowing developers to command the pace and project direction may lead to dead ends and postponement. Excessive focus on delivering via unbending and stringent project management can indicate developers might lose connection with the project's objectives.
The careful consideration of client needs
VoC must be created in the idea generation stage and afterward. In agile development methodology, you assign a product owner to be the personification of the voice. But the VoC must be methodically captured in the documentation, which pushes the product development process forward. It indicates that user demands have been thoroughly investigated, recorded, and converted into design requirements and technical specifications.
Each path to a final product throughout product development is diverse, and each sector has a particular collection of characteristics related to producing novel products. Consider that every product before yours encountered the same difficulties if you have trouble figuring it out independently.
There are numerous active pieces, from handling the product through rapid prototyping and international advertising of your product. These steps will help you divide the daunting challenge of launching an innovative item to market into more manageable segments as you go through your product development method.