Product Development
Product development is the process by which ideas or concepts are transformed into viable and marketable products and services. This process is dynamic, always moving, changing, and responding to feedback; never static.
It 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 process 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.
There are a number of frameworks that product teams follow to start the process. Most approaches advocate understanding customer needs, market research, prototyping, and testing ideas before fully investing in it.
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 this process.
The specifics will vary based on what you are actually building, but below are some common early stage product development frameworks.
