Product Development

What is product development?

Product development is the complete process of delivering a new product or improving an existing
one for customers. The customers can be external or internal within a company. And it can support
many different types of products from software to hardware, to consumer goods and services.
Product development methodologies are used to build many new offerings. In this article, we are
going to focus on its impact on software development for paying customers. It encompasses all
stages required to bring a new experience to end users — from ideation and analysis to design,
engineering, and testing.
A clear product development plan gives companies a way to explore new product ideas and learn
what customers want in the early stages of conceptualization. The objective is to ensure that the
new or enhanced product satisfies a real customer need and helps the company reach business goals.
How do teams approach product development?
The first stage in any product development process is to identify and analyse the business
opportunity — this can be how you serve external customers or build internal products for the
organization. Before a concept moves to implementation, you must determine if and how it supports
overall business objectives. A feasibility study, for example, can help teams determine whether a
concept has the potential to be successful before a full go-to-market investment is made.
Once you have a clear vision for what you want to achieve, the next step in your product
development process is to define what will be built. Researching customer needs, prioritizing
features, and testing concepts help you narrow in on the key capabilities that will be delivered in a
new product or release.
Many product teams create lightweight wireframes, mock-ups, and prototypes to show what they
envision and to capture early feedback. This also ensures that engineering understands exactly what
to build and how the functionality should be implemented.
Your product development methodology will guide how you approach the implementation of your
product development process. For example, if your organization follows a waterfall approach, you
will ideate and define all release requirements upfront. If your organization is agile, your approach
to product development will be more incremental.
What are some common early-stage product development frameworks?
There are a number of frameworks that product teams follow to start the product development
process. Most approaches advocate understanding customer needs, market research, prototyping,
and testing ideas before fully investing in product development.
Determining the best approach for your organization largely depends on your product. For example,
hardware products might follow steps differently in the product development process than software
solutions. Medical and financial products may require more legal and compliance activities and
therefore lengthen the product development process.
The specifics will vary based on what you are actually building, but below are some common early-
stage product development frameworks.

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Design thinking
Design thinking is a framework for design and innovation. It includes cognitive, strategic, and
functional processes for developing new concepts. It is central to user and human-centered design.
The table below shows the fundamental steps behind design thinking.
Empathize Understand the user and what their needs are

Define Frame the problem in user and human-centered ways

Ideate Gather feedback and create ideas

Prototype Produce preliminary versions of a product or feature

Test Determine what works and identify any issues

Front end innovation

Front end innovation represents the beginning stages of the product development process. It should
not be confused with the user interface, which is often referred to as the "front end" as well. Front
end innovation is used for scoping out the concept of a product and determining whether or not to
invest further time and resources. There is not a universally accepted definition or dominant
framework but you can see common components below.
Strategic planning Establish company and product vision

Idea selection and analysis Conceptualize and understand product feasibility

Product definition Build a business case and gather requirements

New product development (NPD)
NPD is the process of taking a product from concept to market availability. It can apply to
developing a new product as well as improving an established product.
Idea generation Brainstorm ideas internally and gather ideas externally
from customers

Idea screening Analyze and prioritize ideas

Concept testing Turn an idea into a defined concept

Market strategy and business analysis Determine the cost and potential profit

Technical product design and development Design and develop the product

Market testing Perform beta testing or a trial run of the product

Commercialization Complete a comprehensive go-to-market launch and

introduce the product to the market

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Who manages the product development process?
Product managers are responsible for guiding the success of a product. This starts with setting
strategy and building the product roadmap. But product managers also guide a cross-functional
team as part of the product development process. This team includes design, engineering,
marketing, IT, sales, support, and finance. This kind of cross-functional alignment helps
organizations deliver a Complete Product Experience.
While product managers are at the center and oversee the entire product lifecycle, its success is a
collaborative effort. Each group of the cross-functional team owns a particular area and also likely
has a functional leader who is a part of the process and works closely with the product manager.
Innovation and new products are integral to a company’s continued success. Establishing a defined
product development process that works for your organization ensures that you launch products that
fulfil customer needs.

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What is Product Development?
Product development typically refers to all stages involved in bringing a product from concept or
idea through market release and beyond. In other words, product development incorporates a
product’s entire journey.
Standard Stages of Progress in Product Development
There are many steps to this process, and it’s not the same path for every organization, but these are
the most common stages through which products typically progress:
• Identifying a market need.
Products solve problems. So, identifying a problem that needs solving (or a better way of being
solved) is where this journey should begin. Conversations with potential customers, surveys, and
other user research activities can inform this step.
• Quantifying the opportunity.
Not every problem is problematic enough to warrant a product-based solution. However, the pain it
causes and the number of people or organizations it impacts can determine whether it’s a worthy
problem to solve and if people are willing to pay for a solution (be it with money or their data).
• Conceptualizing the product.
Some solutions may be obvious, while others may be less intuitive. Here’s where the team puts in
the effort and applies their creativity to devising how a product might serve its needs.
• Validating the solution.
Before too much time is spent prototyping and design, whether the proposed solution is viable
should be tested. Of course, this can still happen at the conceptual level. Still, it is an early test to
see whether the particular product idea is worth pursuing further or if it will be rejected or only
lightly adopted by the target user.
• Building the product roadmap.
With a legitimate product concept in hand, product management can build out the product roadmap,
identifying which themes and goals are central to develop first to solve the most significant pain
points and spark adoption.
• Developing a minimum viable product (MVP).
This initial version of the product needs just enough functionality to be used by customers.
• Releasing the MVP to users.
Experiments can gauge interest, prioritize marketing channels and messages, and begin testing the
waters around price sensitivity and packaging. It also kicks off the feedback loop to bring ideas,
complaints, and suggestions into the prioritization process and populate the product backlog.
• Ongoing iteration based on user feedback and strategic goals.
With a product in the market, enhancements, expansions, and changes will be driven by user
feedback via various channels. Over time the product roadmap will evolve based on this learning

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and the objectives the company sets for this product. This work never ends until it’s finally time to
sunset a product at the end of its lifecycle.

Product Development is Not Product Management

When you understand product development this way, you can see that it is not synonymous with
product management, although many people mistakenly use the terms interchangeably. Indeed,
product development does not refer to a single role at all.
In some organizations, “product development” may be shorthand for the implementation team,
comprised primarily of developers, engineers, and possibly quality assurance.
But, when it comes to the house’s personnel side, it should instead view it as more of an overall
process or method for bringing products to market, which involves many teams across a company,
including:
• Product management
• Product marketing
• Project management
• Agile management (Scrum masters, product owners, etc.)
• Architecture
• Design
• UI/UX
• Development/Engineering
• Manufacturing
• Testing or QA
• Shipping/Distribution
Essentially, it encompasses everyone involved, from idea generation through to customer delivery.
Each of these groups plays an essential role in the process, defining, designing, building, testing, or
delivering the product.
How to Create a Product Development Plan in 3 Steps
Not to be confused with a project plan, a product development plan encompasses the overarching
journey from idea to market. It should include and engage as many stakeholders as possible to
ensure all of their specific needs, requirements, and concerns are being considered (if not
addressed).
1. Start with a product vision
It begins with a product vision, which aligns everyone around the shared objective for this product.
This is followed by a product mission—the ultimate purpose of the product, who it is for, and what
it does for them. Finally, it establishes some guiding principles for the work to come.

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With product vision and mission statements in hand, primary goals for the product can be
established. These may be a little fuzzier in the early stages, such as finding product-market fit, but
they can rapidly evolve into measurable KPIs or OKRs. These measurable targets help shape which
features, enhancements, and capabilities the product needs to achieve them.
2. Craft a roadmap
Assuming customer research and validation has already occurred, the product team can then craft a
product roadmap, prioritizing the significant themes to be addressed (we’ll dive further into product
roadmaps next). Date-based milestones and targets can be established, but there should be a
minimal focus on dates and maximum attention paid to creating value and adapting to the product
goals and performance against key metrics.
3. Implement the roadmap for maximum impact
Once the product roadmap is agreed upon, it’s time to make things happen. Implementation teams
can create schedules, break down significant themes into sprints, and generate iterations of the
product. This creates a feedback loop from customers, the sales team, and support, identifying new
opportunities, pointing out shortcomings, and shining a light on areas to hone, improve, and expand.
From here, it’s a cycle of reviewing data, synthesizing feedback, and continually updating the
product roadmap while grooming the product backlog to ensure every development cycle is utilized
for maximum impact.

How Do Product Roadmaps Fit into Product Development?

Whether you start at the conceptualization stage or first try to identify and validate a market need—
you will want to have a system in place for prioritizing, summarizing, and capturing your product’s
key objectives and significant themes.
The ideal tool for this early-stage planning is a product roadmap designed to strategically and
visually convey your high-level product. So why is it essential to build your roadmap visually?
There are several reasons to do so, but here are the two primary benefits:
With a visual product roadmap, you and your team can more easily refer back to the product
strategy you agreed on and quickly reacquaint yourself with those high-level objectives to make
sure you’re still on track.
Contrast this visual, easy-to-review roadmap with a typical spreadsheet-based roadmap loaded with
features and to-do items arranged in no particular order, and you can understand why dedicated road
mapping software makes all the difference.
A visually appealing roadmap can also help a product manager present its strategic goals and plans
more compellingly to the company’s executives and other key stakeholders.
Earning this buy-in is often necessary to secure organizational approval to move ahead with new
product development. Therefore, it makes sense to give your product roadmap every advantage you
can before presenting it to your stakeholders.

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What is Agile Product Development?
Agile product development is another term you might hear often. This refers to the familiar product
development concept we described in the introduction—all steps involved in delivering a product to
the market—including agile software development principles, such as rapid iteration based on user
feedback.
The benefit of the agile framework is that it allows an organization to shorten the cycle from
brainstorming through actually launching a product—because the product team intentionally pushes
out versions of the product (starting with its early-stage MVP) much more quickly and with much
fewer updates and improvements in each release. In addition, this allows the team to enlist the
feedback of actual users to make the product better incrementally.
A More Literal Definition of Product Development
Finally, you might also encounter a far narrower definition of product development, describing the
product’s actual development: This would be the coding stage in software or manufacturing in a
physical product).
When it comes to software, development teams can create and maintain their product development
roadmaps to prioritize, summarize, and communicate their plans to build and ultimately release the
product. For example, below is a product development roadmap template that your team can use to
stay on track during the development process.
Takeaways: Where the Magic Happens in Agile
Product development is the hard part. It’s where bright ideas collide with reality and where utopian
visions of the future crash into the limitations of technology and headcount that separates dreamers
from doers.
To avoid a promising product vision from faltering in the face of challenging work and difficult
hurdles, roadmap strategies should be tightly coupled with Agile planning to optimize the work
being done.

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