Three strategies for building a strong product development process

The best applications are simple and easy to use, but developing those applications is exceptionally hard work. Even seemingly basic apps require a considerable amount of time and effort to create. Imagine the challenge of building an entire customer-friendly website or mobile app – and the potential financial and reputational pitfalls companies can fall into if those products do not succeed.

Yet most software projects fail due to a lack of alignment between key stakeholders, misunderstanding customers’ needs, and a need to push products out too quickly. While speed is important, so is taking the time to make sure everyone is on the same page, creating a list of priorities, conducting proper customer research, and performing periodic assessments.

Here are three strategies to help you incorporate all of these things into your product development processes to ensure your applications have a better chance of success.

Slow down before you accelerate

One doesn’t normally think about slowing down when it comes to software development. Sometimes, however, it’s best to step back, assess strategic goals, and map out a plan. It’s best to do this right at the start before you begin investing time and money into your project.

This initial phase is important to risk mitigation and ensuring you’re developing with a purpose. Without prior planning, it can become all too easy to fail to account for a potential vulnerability or waste precious resources on developing features that aren’t applicable to your mission. Either of those scenarios could lead to your company taking significant reputational and financial hits.

Slowing down – just for a bit – before accelerating allows you to reset the playing field, lower the potential for risk and, ultimately, deliver a high-quality product.

Get everyone on the same page

This is a good time to convene key stakeholders to brainstorm ideas and make sure everyone agrees on the direction the project is heading. That’s not always easy. Different stakeholders tend to have different ideas about which features to prioritize. Developers might favor a particular widget. HR, finance, or sales managers may have their own wish lists. Meanwhile, the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) might continually ask for new features throughout development.

While it’s important to give everyone a voice in the process, it’s equally important to have clearly defined goals that drive that process. Goals can include expected ROI (Return On Investment) and measurable KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) such as customer engagement levels. All of these should funnel up to a larger corporate objective: Creating a product that generates sales.

Hitting those marks is impossible when everyone is acting territorial or throwing out feature ideas just because they’re cool. Get around this problem by holding goal alignment workshops with all key stakeholders before writing a single line of code. Invite the CEO, Product Managers, Developers, Sales Managers, and anyone else with a vested interest in the product. We used to do this via whiteboards; now, we use virtual tools like Miro and Trello to get the job done.

Whichever method you choose, use these workshops to agree upon goals and objectives and create a development plan that maps to those goals. This should help you prioritize product features and components, streamline your development process and create a solution that aligns with your company’s core needs.

Get to know your users

People don’t buy products because they love using them; they buy products because they expect a specific result. For instance, I recently purchased a new drill that allows me to complete building projects much faster than any other drill I’ve ever used. I love that drill, and yet, I really don’t love that drill. What I love is the fact that it allows me to get stuff done quickly. The drill itself is just a tool; it’s the end result that matters.

Customers who purchase software have the same mindset. Sure, they might appreciate an app’s bells and whistles, but at the end of the day, they want to get stuff done. The question is: What do they want to get done? The answer will be different for everyone, but you can find out through customer research.

Start by creating customer personas that answer the following questions:

• Who is our target customer (This includes their title and demographics)?
• What are their needs?
• What type of solutions do they typically use?
• How do they use them?

Then, start looking at the competitive landscape. What other types of solutions are out there? What do they do? What kinds of feedback are they getting from their users?

After you’ve explored these issues, use what you’ve discovered as you enter your design phase. Build high-fidelity mock-ups and rapid prototypes (i.e., proofs of concept) and test them with your target audiences. See what does and does not work, and experiment with the design until you’ve got a solution that is unique from the rest of the field and meets your customers’ needs.

Finally, test the prototype with users. Find out what they like and dislike, incorporate that feedback into your design and keep iterating.

As you’re iterating, use agile development processes to make changes as you go. Many times, Apple has introduced a new version of iOS as we’ve been about to launch an app for one of our clients, forcing us to rethink our creation to take advantage of new features. That’s OK because since we use agile, we’re prepared to make adjustments, deprioritizing certain features while up-leveling others – all without losing focus and sticking to our objectives.

Whatever you do, never stop. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow, so continue to invest in your solutions and refine your development processes. Keep your products fresh, relevant, and successful.