It involves all the steps right the way through, from initial ideation and research to concept development, prototyping, mass production, distribution strategy, and ultimately market launch<\/a>.<\/p>\n The development phase of the product lifecycle is a critical one: you can get everything else right, but if the development process is flawed, your SaaS will never<\/em> be a success.<\/p>\n So what’s the difference between product management<\/strong> and the product development process <\/strong>itself?<\/p>\n In a nutshell:<\/p>\n It’s clear where the product development process sits: it’s a part of product management as a discipline.<\/p>\n \u201cThe strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.\u201d – Phil Jackson<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One of the most important things to understand about the product development cycle is that it’s a team sport<\/strong>.<\/p>\n You need a range of disciplines to bring a new product to life:<\/p>\n Next up, we’re going to break down the entire process of bringing an entirely new product idea into reality.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything begins with an idea.\u201d – Earl Nightingale<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Product managers need something <\/em>they can bring to the team to start with. There are many ways to generate ideas:<\/a><\/p>\n Competitor analysis<\/a> can help you quickly figure out if there’s a market need and start to figure out product market fit.<\/p>\n Tools like Google Trends and other industry publications can help point you in the right direction.<\/p>\n There’s no better way of generating ideas than gaining insight into a user’s perspective. <\/a>Building outlets into your product so existing customers can provide relevant product and feature ideas to you and your development team<\/p>\n Customer-facing teams like the sales or customer success teams<\/a> can share product ideas they’ve picked up from interacting with users.<\/p>\n They’ll be able to make suggestions aligned with your product strategy and serve as a useful ‘idea screening’ stage.<\/p>\n The product marketing team <\/a>can also help as they continuously conduct market research, so they might know what competitors are focusing on and are well positioned to identify if there’s any market gap.<\/p>\n Having great distribution is a fantastic way to gain a competitive advantage.<\/p>\n Before your product definition is set in stone, you should stress test it and figure out whether it’s viable<\/a>. It’s key to the product’s success and helps you avoid the risk of catastrophe (i.e. users hate <\/em>a concept – or it’s not technically feasible).<\/p>\n There are lots of ways to validate a product idea<\/a> in this stage of the development process:<\/p>\n Once you’ve validated your idea, you should work on concept development<\/a>.<\/p>\n This stage is all about concept testing<\/a> to refine your product idea and building a product roadmap<\/a>.<\/p>\n Alongside a roadmap (which sets out what you’ll focus on now, next, and later – a strategic plan for future iterations of the product) you need a detailed business plan outlining your financial constraints, resources, and other risks.<\/p>\n Planning is an often overlooked part of the production process: without it, your product features won’t be anything more than ideas.<\/p>\n Next up is the prototyping<\/a> phase. You might want to go into a ‘lighter touch’ prototyping stage (i.e. low fidelity mockup) or you could even build a working MVP with basic features.<\/p>\n Put simply, a minimum viable product (MVP) <\/a>is a version of a product with just<\/em> enough core functionality to be usable by early customers, who can then provide feedback for future product development.<\/p>\n Your MVP should tackle your user’s main pain points.<\/p>\n This approach means product developers potentially avoid lengthy and (possibly) unnecessary work.<\/p>\n Next up, you should conduct prototyping\/MVP testing<\/a> to identify potential issues that need to be rectified fast.<\/p>\n User feedback is vital to your product development strategy.<\/p>\n You can test the MVP with a sample of your target market. Alternatively, if you have an existing customer base, you can recruit beta testers in-app. Talking to power users<\/a> is also a good idea since they regularly use your product.<\/a><\/p>\n Testing will answer an important question: how are your product’s unique features performing? Have they landed with potential customers in a new market the way you’d expected they would?<\/p>\n You can then collect customer feedback<\/a> via interviews\/focus groups or a series of in-app surveys.<\/p>\n Remember, the more closely you listen to your target customers, the sharper your competitive edge.<\/p>\n In this step, you write the code to develop the final product.<\/p>\n Remember to analyze the feedback <\/a>received from beta testing and incorporate it when developing the product – into the manufacturing process of physical products, it’s a chance to refine and avoid defects.<\/p>\n In reality, this is the most crucial element of the development part of the product life cycle: without a working code, you don’t have a product.<\/p>\n You’ve done all the hard work: now it’s about nailing a successful product launch.<\/p>\n Alongside your developers, it’s key for product managers to collaborate with the marketing team to create the go-to-market strategy.<\/a><\/p>\n You should be mindful of market conditions and prevailing market trends: if your competitive analysis shows a particular time of year is sensible to launch in, then tailor your launch accordingly.<\/p>\n Once you’ve got your launch over the line, you should continuously gather feedback and monitor product usage data<\/a>. That’ll give you valuable insight into where to focus your efforts <\/a>during the next<\/em> new product development stage.<\/p>\n Of course, how the product development process looks in practice might differ depending on the context.<\/p>\n Let’s explore a couple of examples.<\/p>\n CRM tools<\/a> are vital<\/em> in the world of modern business: managing customer relationships shouldn’t rely on a spreadsheet!<\/p>\n A team looking at developing a CRM might follow the stages above like this:<\/p>\n AI is a rapidly growing area: what might the software development process look like for an AI writing assistant:<\/p>\n The product development process has several underlying principles. Here are some best practices.<\/p>\n Prioritization<\/a> is a fundamental skill for PMs: without it, you’ll have to treat everything<\/em> as a priority.<\/p>\n Choose product ideas based on optimizing for value realized to the business and your users.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n There are many frameworks to choose from that can help you make better decisions:<\/p>\n The beauty of cross-functional teams is that each discipline brings a unique skill set to the table.<\/p>\n Getting developers involved in ideation, designers in planning the launch<\/a>, and sales input to the roadmap can only improve collaborative outcomes.<\/a><\/p>\n Ensure all product development refers to different team members. For example, if you were to involve engineers in your strategic planning, they can provide accurate technical estimates and help set stakeholder expectations.<\/p>\n Agile teams have a proven track record of delivering valuable outcomes, faster. Teams that build in a ‘waterfall’ style where all requirements are defined up front run the risk of getting off track.<\/p>\n An agile, highly adaptive<\/a>, user-centric approach will set you and your team up for success.<\/p>\n “Agile is an attitude, not a technique with boundaries.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Onboarding is critically important<\/a>. If you can’t get users to experience value fast <\/em>from your existing product, the hard work you and the team put into the development process might go to waste.<\/p>\n Product managers should work with the marketing team to orchestrate an effective comms<\/a> strategy that highlights the unique value proposition, key features, and how users can make the best use of them.<\/p>\n The new product development process is notoriously tricky.<\/p>\n Hopefully, you now feel much better equipped with a firm understanding of the key steps, principles of successful development, and some examples you can draw inspiration from.<\/p>\nProduct development vs. product management<\/h2>\n
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![\"Visual](\"https:\/\/images.storychief.com\/account_6827\/the-7-stages-of-product-management-process-800_998aa2048d55e31e90c7cb3fdfeec54b_800.jpg)
<\/picture>Who is involved in the new product development process?<\/h2>\n
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What are the seven stages of the product development process?<\/h2>\n
Step 1: Carry out idea generation<\/h3>\n
Market research<\/h4>\n
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/images.storychief.com\/account_6827\/keyword-research-market-validation-800_608065ca48272103235a5498357115ac_800.jpg)
<\/picture>Customer requests<\/h4>\n
![\"Launch](\"https:\/\/images.storychief.com\/account_6827\/customer-requests-in-userpilot_3a0424be8146956bfe299cfb9d74c14f_800.png)
<\/picture>Collaboration with cross-functional teams<\/h4>\n
Step 2: Perform product validation before the product development process begins<\/h3>\n
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![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/images.storychief.com\/account_6827\/fake-door-test-product-idea-validation-800_140b79c8c52a6aa1dd917df689a2d67b_800.jpg)
<\/picture>![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/images.storychief.com\/account_6827\/fake-door-test-02-product-idea-validation-800_60387a619410394e3b61afb04918e347_800.jpg)
<\/picture>Step 3: Conduct concept development and plan the product roadmap<\/h3>\n
![\"journey-map-tracking-plan\"](\"https:\/\/images.storychief.com\/account_6827\/journey-map-tracking-plan-2000-800_f612170757506ea9a1e2af75ba1bf726_800.jpg){kind=tracking}
<\/picture>Step 4: Build the minimum viable product (MVP)<\/h3>\n
Step 5: Collect customer feedback on MVP and iterate<\/h3>\n
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/images.storychief.com\/account_6827\/beta-testing-market-validation-800_71db221d3b62f10b2635d45cb34725d3_800.jpg)
<\/picture>![\"Build](\"https:\/\/images.storychief.com\/account_6827\/surveys-in-userpilot_26600a2e3da68edad170a1e70d578f8b_800.png)
<\/picture>Step 6: Develop the final product<\/h3>\n
Step 7: Launch the product and continuously improve it<\/h3>\n
![\"Analyze](\"https:\/\/images.storychief.com\/account_6827\/userpilot-analytics_0e6a2c04ea7021d4fdcdfc9150bbcb8a_800.png)
<\/picture>What are some product development examples?<\/h2>\n
Developing a new CRM software<\/h3>\n
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Building an AI writing assistant feature for a product growth tool<\/h3>\n
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Best practices to follow for developing a successful product<\/h2>\n
Prioritize product ideas that align with business goals<\/h3>\n
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![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/images.storychief.com\/account_6827\/the-value-vs-effort-framework-800_69ecd67557973471eee2b67f3a307184_800.jpg)
<\/picture>Foster cross-functional team collaboration and communication<\/h3>\n
Follow an agile mindset<\/h3>\n
Don’t compromise on the quality of the product onboarding<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n