What are the best practices for partnering with regulators and watchdogs in product development?

1 Understand the regulatory landscape

Before you start developing your product, you need to research and understand the regulatory landscape of your industry and market. You need to know what laws, rules, standards, and guidelines apply to your product, and how they affect your design, development, testing, and launch processes. You also need to identify the key regulators and watchdogs that oversee your sector, and their roles, responsibilities, and expectations.

2 Engage with regulators and watchdogs early and often

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to assume that regulators and watchdogs are obstacles or enemies that you need to avoid or overcome. Instead, you should treat them as partners and stakeholders that you need to engage with early and often. You should communicate your product vision, goals, and value proposition, and solicit their feedback, input, and advice. You should also keep them updated on your progress, challenges, and changes, and invite them to participate in your testing, validation, and evaluation activities.

3 Incorporate regulatory requirements into your product roadmap

Another common mistake is to treat regulatory requirements as an afterthought or a separate task that you need to deal with at the end of your product development cycle. This can lead to delays, rework, or rejection of your product. Instead, you should incorporate regulatory requirements into your product roadmap, and align them with your user needs, business objectives, and technical feasibility. You should also prioritize and sequence your regulatory tasks according to their importance, urgency, and dependency.

4 Leverage best practices and tools for compliance

Compliance is not only a legal obligation but also a competitive advantage and quality indicator for your product, so it's important to leverage best practices and tools. This includes using frameworks and standards that are recognized by regulators, implementing security and privacy principles, adopting testing and documentation methods that are transparent and auditable, and utilizing compliance software and platforms to automate compliance tasks. Examples of these include ISO, GDPR, HIPAA, encryption, anonymization, consent, unit testing, code review, user testing, risk assessment, gap analysis, and audit trail.

5 Learn from feedback and iterate

Finally, you should not view compliance as a one-time event or a final destination, but as an ongoing process and a continuous improvement opportunity. You should learn from the feedback and suggestions of regulators and watchdogs, and use them to iterate and refine your product. You should also monitor and anticipate changes in the regulatory environment, and adapt your product accordingly. By doing so, you can build a product that is not only compliant, but also innovative, user-centric, and value-driven.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?