The Product Development Lifecycle — An Overview
Product development is a never-ending journey that goes through challenging and rewarding stages like researching and launching. All the product managers I’ve talked to agree that no two development journeys are ever the same.
In this article, let’s shed some light on these stages of a Product Development Life Cycle.
Ideation
The initial stage of the product development process begins by generating new product ideas. This is where we brainstorm product concepts based on customer needs, pain points, and market research. We have to make sure we have a valid business case backed by thorough strategic plans.
To get an understanding of the space we’re entering, we ask —
Who are we building this product for?
Has the product need been validated?
What is the competitive landscape like?
Scoping
This stage is where we refine product strategy and create a high-level product roadmap. We need to make sure that we have a value proposition in place which helps us figure out high-level features and functions.
Developing
After we’ve conducted planning and discovery, we collaborate with our teams to collate customer demands, technical requirements and plan how the product can fit in the market. The first release of the product is a prototype which is the leanest release built to validate hypotheses and collect early feedback. Once we have collected enough feedback and it validates our hypothesis, we need to compromise between features needed for MVP (minimum viable product with core features necessary) and the time to market. Developing the product continues by adding new features and maintaining a working product.
Launching
Once we complete the development of the first version of the product, we prepare for launch and release the product to market. We let our target audience know about the launch by using press announcements, advertising, or launch events. (platforms like Product Hunt are great for initial release). During the launch process, the marketing and operations team monitor the developments very closely along with Product Managers.
Analysis
Product development is incomplete without gathering and analyzing the insights and converting them to relevant metrics. These insights can be generated through methods like A/B testing, user interviews, rating analysis, usage behavior, and more. We have to make sure that the features of the product are tested and evaluated to see if a feature is worth keeping and then either to be iterated on or be dropped from the product completely.
One famous KPIs framework used for analysis is — AARRR
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue
Iterate or Kill
One thing analysis helps us with is, monitoring the product performance on the basis of real-world data, and as we know, the data doesn’t lie. This helps us decide which parts of the product should be iterated on and which could be removed. Sadly, there are features that don’t provide ROI and generate no engagement, and should be removed. All the features which do provide value are developed further and the user is informed about these decisions.
