When you read ‘product development’, you generally understand the meaning of these two words. But what do you truly do to develop a new product for your company? What are the types of new products, what stages does development include, and what mistakes should be avoided?

Need of Brand New Product

The market, technology and customer needs change, so relying on the same range year after year is not profitable. To be one step ahead of the competition, it is important to innovate, which means developing and successfully launching new products.

The development of a new product in companies proceeds differently depending on the industry, available resources and the chosen methodology. But the single key to success is a well-thought-out and cost-effective strategy and sequence of actions. With its help, you can allocate resources, optimize processes, reduce costs and avoid common mistakes.

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What is product development

Product development is the journey from an idea to the final software version, ready for use. Product development is based on a step-by-step plan that helps create and bring a product, service or service to market. We will talk more about it later in this article.

The development of a new product helps to solve such business problems:

increase the level of competitiveness;

expand the offer

increase brand awareness;

scale business;

attract new customer segments.

Specialists from different areas are involved in the development: marketing, design, content, development, testing, sales and analytics. They work as a team under the direction of a product manager who is responsible for every aspect of development.

Unlike project development, when the customer comes with a ready-made work plan, product development in the company takes place almost in real time. Priorities are placed according to the value and allowable cost of resources.

Types of new product

Types of new products are distinguished according to how much the product has been updated.

Innovation. Development of technical products that were not previously on the market. The latest technologies or materials are used for creation. The percentage of such products is small, since the launch is associated with a risk for the company.

Modifications. These are improvements to existing products. The company can change the appearance, packaging, features, add new features to the product, or develop it at a lower cost.

Copies. New products for the company, modeled after competitors. Copies also include products that largely repeat the existing ones, but are still necessary to expand the range.

Product Development Stages

The product development management process is unpredictable—it will always be different. Even if companies operate in the same area, at least the approach to work and tools for creating a product will differ.

Development moves in small iterations. Two weeks is a classic iteration time, no matter what project management methodology is used. This makes it possible to correctly prioritize during development and evaluate intermediate results in relation to the effort expended. At the end of each iteration, the team produces a working result in the form of a product update. Typically, product development includes the following steps.

Idea formation. As a rule, it all starts with identifying a user need - the main factor for which a future product is conceived. It is important to track needs in real time, as they may change due to market, political or economic conditions. In any case, the idea of the product is formed from the needs of the user, and not vice versa.

Study. Having decided on the idea, they begin to study it. Now one of the most productive ways is to do CustDev (Customer Development). This is obtaining information about the product from users through interviews and experiments - read more about the method in this article. Based on CustDev, a customer-oriented approach is built, which is very important in product development. We remember that everything is done for the sake of the needs of the client.

What to Look for to avoid mistakes

It all comes down to resources. If you follow the sequence of development stages, then no fatal errors will happen. Development should be carried out iteratively: first we make the “foundation” of the building, then its “framework”.

Automation is always time consuming and expensive. It is impossible to automate raw processes, first it is important to clean up and debug the solution, and only then automate it.

It is important to remember that the world is changing rapidly. The reality may differ from the approved development plan, and the main thing to build on is the needs of users.