Product Development Process

What Is the Product Development Process?

The product development process surrounds all steps needed to take a product from concept to market availability. These include identifying a market need, researching the competitive landscape, conceptualizing a solution, developing a product roadmap, building a minimum viable product, etc.

Who Is Involved in the Process?

Product managers are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the company’s products. They typically drive the product development process from a strategic standpoint. But this process is not strictly a product management function. Product development requires the work and input of many teams across a business which include: Development, Design, Marketing, Sales, Finance, Testing.

Product managers act as the strategic directors of the development process. They pull together the cross-functional team, communicate the big-picture goals and plans for the product (via the product roadmap), and oversee the team’s progress.

What are the courses of the Product Development Process?

  There are several systems for new product development. Below are a couple of examples of frameworks that suggest specific product development process steps.

• The Design Thinking Approach

Design thinking is a framework for developing new products based on first identifying a problem or need from the user’s perspective. The steps involved in the design thinking process are:

Step 1: Empathize with users

Step 2: Define the problem

Step 3: Brainstorm potential solutions

Step 4: Build a prototype

Step 5: Test your solution

• The New Product Development (NPD) Framework

This is a standard, composite approach that businesses often use to develop physical products — as opposed to digital products like software. There are many variations to the NPD framework but here is a common approach that divides the process into six steps:

Step 1: Ideate

Brainstorming is where the team shares all of its innovative ideas.

Step 2: Research

Validating your idea with potential users, and reviewing competitive offerings.

Step 3: Plan

Sourcing suppliers, estimating the production budget, determining how to price your product, etc.

Step 4: Prototype

Develop a sample of your finished product to share with key stakeholders. Note: this is different from the minimum viable product, which is for early adopters.

Step 5: Source

Putting together a plan for vendors, materials, and other resources needed to turn the successful prototype into a mass-market product.

Step 6: Cost

Documenting all of the costs required to bring the product to market. This should include line items for manufacturing, materials, setup costs, storage and shipping, taxes, etc.

Another approach to the product development process is rational product management. Based on the rational development process used by the software industry, this approach offers a framework to strategically plan, iteratively develop, continuously verify quality, and control changes.

What are the Best Approaches For Your Product Development Process?

Although specific approaches vary, most companies that repeatedly deliver successful products in the market share certain strategies. Below are some of these best practices for new product development:

1. Start with your users’ needs and frustrations in mind.
2. Use market research and your own users’ feedback. 
3. Communicate regularly across your company. Share knowledge and insights.
4. Use one of the many available frameworks for your product development process. 
5. Validate your product concepts as soon as possible. For some products, this might include a “soft launch” in which you test the product with a small group of early adopters, before a full-scale market release.
6. Invite your multi-functional team into the ideation and brainstorming stages. ( Insights about your market can come from anywhere.)
7. Set realistic development timelines.
8. Focus only on ideas your organization has both the resources and the expertise to execute on.