What's the best way to manage product development from idea to launch?

Assess customer needs through surveys, interviews, and tests to define value proposition, customer segments, and product-market fit in product development.

When working on a product strategy if you are asking yourself 'how did I reach this conclusion' or your gut tells you your recommendations don't feel quite right, take it back to the customer and start with first principles. Who are they? What does their day-to-day look like? What are their unmet needs? How is your company/product best positioned to serve those needs? What alternatives does the customer have? Next consider whether your proposed recommendations are addressing these unmet needs? Or were you too highly influenced by internal stakeholders, un-validated assumptions or market trends.

Based on my current experience after gathering data about our customers, we synthesize it to develop a deep understanding of their needs and pain points. Since we are also our own customer this involves us asking ourselves questions such as: What are the root causes of their/our problems? What are our/their desired outcomes? What are their/our biggest pain points? What are our/their preferences and behaviors? What are their/our expectations of your product?

For a product development, 1 needs to review performance of like to like product in past season. If it is a new product, then needs to believe & gel product detailing & design as per brands DNA, this process makes the product unique & loyal customers easily get connected with the new product. Product development also needs to focus on launch date of the same product, which will define its pricing, detailing, customer preferences & customer acceptance. If these factors can be planned & executed at initial stage, an idea of a product can become a ideal product

A clear outline of what the process entails, realistic timelines, regular discussion between all parties, project plan with who is responsible for what by when and properly managed to ensure all timelines met and all details such as claims, regulatory issues, costings etc are all adhered to!

To solve a customer's problem, brainstorm, ideate, or co-create without judgement. Assess feasibility, desirability, viability, customer value, strategic alignment, competitive advantage, and technological complexity to identify the best ideas.

In my experience, brainstorming , ranking are overrated processes to find new innovations. What usually much better works, is to design and build several prototypes of possible solutions within small teams. The team interaction and the actual problem to solve makes these teams creative. Which result in innovative and new ways.

Saying 'no' during the ideation phase is incredibly powerful. The deeper the understanding of the customer's needs, the easier it will be to say 'no' or 'no for now' to a particular idea or solution. It's much easier to justify your 'why' under scrutiny if you can bring the conversation back to the customer and their needs.

Extend customer understanding by validating assumptions through targeted market research. Use competitive analysis and MVP (Minimum Viable Product) testing to confirm that the identified problem is genuine.

It is important to start with a big focus on the needs of the customer, understanding the DNA is vital to fit the rights steps. The Double Diamond Model often is the most efficient and cover biggest part of the insights: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. Then, if we want to be really picky, today the market is changing very fast, so some parts of traditional models need to be adapted following the area of design, of course. But again, the vital part is the first DNA analysis of customer/client/user′s needs. When those steps are set well from the beginning, the process will go smoothly and everyone will benefit from that.

If applicable, leverage internal team members with client facing roles to contribute to initial prototype testing. For example, client success roles, project managers, and/or implementation consultants can test protypes to identify initial kinks. They have a deep understanding of the client's use cases as well as the appropriate internal language to communicate what needs to be improved. This testing would occur prior to client-facing testing.

Ao longo do tempo percebo que os projetos que tive mais êxito foram aqueles em que pude acelerar a etapa de valida??o e gera??o de alternativas através de protótipos. Foram situa??es em que os protótipos ajudaram a visualizar melhor a proposta de valor ou, como aconteceu várias vezes, deixar claro que a solu??o idealizada n?o era t?o boa assim. Isso permitiu corre??es de rota mais ágeis e certeiras.

Once you have a promising idea, it's essential to validate it before diving into development. In my view following might help to achieve Idea Validation:- Market Research: Conduct in-depth market research to assess demand for your product. Prototyping and MVP: Create a prototype or a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test your idea with a small group of users Surveys and Focus Groups: Gather feedback through surveys or focus group discussions. Landing Pages and A/B Testing: Build a landing page to gauge interest. Financial Viability: Assess the financial feasibility of your idea.

Details, logic, and context matter - Sometimes in aiming to focus on the core concept we overlook small details, like gaps in the flow, or establish scenarios in a prototype that do not make sense. Remember that those who experience these prototypes do not have the context you do, and can get stuck on tiny details. Gaps in the logical flow, omissions of data or lack of context distract them from the real offering. Make sure you "test before you test", show your prototypes to colleagues without context, and ask them to spot the faults you may not have seen.

After generating ideas and selecting what would best suit the customers' needs, prototypes should be built and tested. I think it is better when more than one prototype is built and tested extensively to get feedback and suggestions for improvement from the product testers. The prototypes should be tested extensively before being launched, to avoid negative user experiences.

Once you are at the stage where you can see that your product idea is viable, you need to then work on making sure it is going to meet specific needs of the majority of your potential customers. Listen and work closely with users that are testing your product and make small incremental changes instead of sweeping overhauls. You don't want to over correct on a feature, you are in the fine-tuning stage and you want your improvements to be able to made quickly and efficiently, while gathering feedback after each iteration.

At Black we aim ship product releases at least fortnightly, scoping versions of any new features so that they're built and shipped for testing within one sprint cycle. It's tempting to scope and build out the "ultimate" version of something new, but shipping something much simpler that delivers incremental value towards the product outcome we're after, then informing improvements with early feedback definitely works best for us.

If working with the public sector, it is essential to ensure you adequately work with your customers to pilot your solution as close to an operational deployment as possible. A rigorous approach to piloting that is based on a mutual understanding and where you can measure impact is crucial to ongoing uptake.

To effectively navigate the development of a 0 - 1 type of product, it is crucial to prioritize cost-efficient validation and testing methods. However, it's important to recognize that cost-effectiveness is just one aspect to consider; a well-defined project should also encompass a robust timeline and scope. In my experience, I have found several prototype methods to be particularly effective: High-fidelity prototypes (Scoring: Time > 6/10, User insights > 7/10) Wizard of Oz prototypes with no-code tools (Scoring: Time > 8/10, User insights > 8/10) A/B testing (Scoring: Time > 10/10, User insights > 9/10) Choosing the right method should take into account three critical factors: time constraints, available resources, & the project's scope.

One pitfall I often see is "making changes to your product based on the feedback and data you collect from your stakeholders", ignoring the customer. This behavior just throws away the learning concept one is expecting when developing a new successful product. With a good team that can make fast and iterative deployments, it's very usual to see a big plan to be split in several small packages that will be delivered in a day or a sprint, adding almost zero value to customer or business. To avoid this pattern, make sure the data collected from customers and users are part of the equation to move forward in your next iteration. Don't define 5 MVP on an inception and keep that course for several weeks without revisiting your hypothesis.

For the successful launch of ReBorn, we always worked with the scale in mind. Specifically, a high impact launch with a leading UK retailer (John Lewis). Having them with us on the development journey was key to our success. They had an important voice in all key stages of the project.

In highly regulated finance industry, the timelines, IT investments and personnel resources taken by product development are extensive. So scaling is crucial to be commercially successful. On my experience there are three key enablers for scaling. 1) Co-operation with distribution partners. Make sure your distribution channel is part of product development and committed to new products sales. 2) Training of sales staff. Sales personnel need to know exactly WHAT they are selling, to WHOM they are selling and WHY they are selling. Train, train and train! 3) Do not give up. If the sales do not pick up immediately, keep on pushing. If the sales results are met, keep on pushing still - you might hit a jackpot. Good luck and a lot of hard work!

My views, have a process driven approach throughout idea generation to product realization and scaling up and be flexible to adopt changes. Will sure benefit any organization to meet/ exceed profitable growth.

Scaling is always challenging and you should expect to use the same innovative mindset here as you did in early stage innovation. What hiccups or unexpected challenges did you uncover? What unique requirements does large scale production have that single unit production did not? How can you build for current and future scale with improvements? If the volume doubled, would different challenges appear?

At Sika, we have a clear product development process, which we aim to follow as we are bound to certain limitations regarding risk mitigation. In a B2B environment like ours, we use different launch strategies depending on the specific market. Some new solutions are particular to only a few customers, so we foster partnerships to introduce new products. However, we seek to build referral programs in new markets with low technology experience. This is one of the preferred ways to instill confidence in our solutions and to lower the entry barriers into a new market.

Here is a tip that can prevent a product from taking too long to develop, cost more that it should, and gets the best kind of market feed back. “Get a new product 90% of what it you think it should be and get it into the market. “ It may not be perfect, but you gain the following benefits: 1-You save time to market, gain profits faster, and get better feedback, than if you overly focus on the last 10%. 2-Let the market tell you if your 90% product needs anything else. 3-Every day that a new product is not on the market is lost profits that you’ll never gain back. 4-A B+ product in the market is better than an A+ product still waiting to be launched. 5-You can always launch a 2.0 version that incorporates real market feedback.

Innovation is sometimes ruthless. The longer a project evolves, the more attached the teams get to their solutions. However, only some innovations are timely or add value to your customers. Therefore, it requires astute leadership to evaluate when innovations are sure to fail for whatever reasons. Instead of pouring in additional resources and funds, sometimes stopping the entire process and re-evaluating the situation is smarter.

My learning has been very simple. Whenever I've found myself stuck, I've realized that I don't know enough and I dig deeper and get into more details. Basically, one should keep removing the onion layer until everything is uncovered.

*Your success or failure is often a reflection of your PREPARATION. *Insist and encourage communication and collaboration. They are key to build TRUST, which is essential for development. *A lot of great ideas can kill you. Be relentless to ensure FOCUS. *PERSIST, but know when to eliminate a project. *Be AGILE and a LIFE LONG LEARNER. *Seek different PERSPECTIVES. *Everyone is far more creative/effective when you make it FUN!

Every Company or Brand carryout the above steps, What's New ?? Reality is even after all above steps, Products Fail as they DO NOT SATISFY Consumer needs at Optimum Pricing !