The product development life cycle is a five-stage process that involves taking a product from the initial concept to the final market launch. Five stages: brainstorm, define, design, test, and launch. Depending on where you work, the exact names of each stage might be a little different, but the overall process is generally the same.
Brainstorm
The first stage of the product development life cycle is the brainstorming stage when the team starts thinking of an idea for a product. It’s a good idea to consider the following factors when initiating a new product concept:
Target market: Your target market is the consumer profile you’re building your product for. These are your potential customers. This is important to identify in the beginning so you can build your product concept around your target market from the start. If not, coming up with a list of user problems is a great place to start.
Competitors: When you have a new product concept, evaluating your existing product portfolio is a good idea. Are there existing products that solve a similar problem? Or does a competitor offer a product that doesn’t allow for market share? And if yes, is your new concept different enough to be viable? Answering these questions can ensure the success of your new concept.
Functionality: While you don’t need a detailed report of the product functionality just yet, you should have a general idea of what functions it will serve. Consider the look and feel of your product and why someone would be interested in purchasing it.
SWOT analysis: Analyzing your product strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats early in the process can help you build the best version of your new concept. This will ensure your product is different from competitors and solves a market gap.
SCAMPER method: use brainstorming methods like SCAMPER, which helps you generate ideas for new products and services by encouraging you to ask seven different types of questions, which will help you understand how you can innovate and improve existing products, services, problems, and ideas.
Define
This stage defines scoping or concept development, and focuses on refining the product strategy.
During this stage, it’s important to define specifics including:
Business analysis: A business analysis consists of mapping out distribution strategy, e-commerce strategy, and more in-depth competitor analysis. The purpose of this step is to begin building a clearly defined product roadmap.
Value proposition: The value proposition is what problem the product is solving. Consider how it differs from other products in the market. This value can be helpful in market research and for developing your marketing strategy.
Success metrics: It’s essential to clarify success metrics early so you can evaluate and measure success once the product is launched. Are there key metrics you want to look out for? These could be basic KPIs like average order value, or something more specific like custom-set goals relevant to your organization.
Marketing strategy: Once you’ve identified your value proposition and success metrics, begin brainstorming a marketing strategy that fits your needs. Consider which channels you want to promote your product on-such as social media or a blog post. While this strategy may need to be revised depending on the finished product, it’s a good idea to think about this when defining your product to begin planning ahead of time.
Design
At this stage, your team develops the ideas for the product. Generally, the design team starts by drawing wireframes, which are outlines or sketches of the product, then moves on to creating prototypes, which are early models of a product that convey its functionality.
At this point in the life cycle, your team makes sure to include all of the product specifications that were outlined in the before stages. And also make sure that each task a user needs to complete is clear and easy to understand.
Test
Before going to the testing phases, your team needs:
- Create interaction prototype design(for digital products) with popular tools like Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, etc.
- Or collaborate with the engineering team to quickly develop the product(for both digital and physical products).
After having the prototype, the designs go through at least three phases of testing:
Internal Testing: First, the team tests the product internally to look for technical glitches and usability problems. This is often referred to as alpha testing.
Stakeholders Testing: Then, the product undergoes a test with stakeholders to make sure the product is aligned with the company’s vision, meets legal guidelines for accessibility, and follows government regulations for privacy, for example.
External Testing: Finally, there’s an external test with potential users. This is the time to figure out whether the product provides a good user experience, meaning it’s usable, equitable, enjoyable, and useful. This is often referred to as beta testing.
In addition, at the external testing step, some companies also test by launching a product (usually a digital product) for users to use and collecting feedback from them, thereby improving the product.
Gathering and implementing feedback at this stage is critical. If users are frustrated or confused by your product, your team makes adjustments or even creates new versions of the design. Then, the designs are tested again, until there’s little or no friction between the product and the user.
It’s important to call out that the product development life cycle isn’t a completely linear process. Your team might cycle between designing and testing a few times before you're ready to launch the product!
Launch
By now, you’ve finalized the design and quality-tested your development and marketing strategy. You should feel confident in your final iteration and be ready to produce your final product.
For a physical product, the product development life cycle looks like a linear process, the launch stage might be the end of this process. But for a digital product, like an app or website, the product development life cycle is not a linear process, it is an iterative cycle process to improve the product to be able to solve the user's problem in the most accurate way, most suitable for the user at different times. Launching the product to a wider audience provides another opportunity to improve the user experience. New users might find problems with the product’s functionality or features to improve that no one noticed before.
Final
So, after the launch stage, teams will often cycle back to the design and testing stages to start working on the next version of a digital product.
Made with ❤️ by Google Developer Students Clubs - Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City team