Many companies come to a critical part of their business growth when they need to develop and launch a new product or innovate an older product and launch it in a new market segment. Even service-oriented companies will often adopt the same product development strategy for their new services. For the reason that services and products can overlap in the way they are conceived and developed.
The aspect that is often overlooked however is the most important one and it has to do with understanding the product development cycle and plan accordingly. Many businesses go for this in a blind manner and tend to create serious problems at a later stage or less than optimal results in the long run.
What are the main stages to develop a product?
Product development can be a complex project, especially when it comes to its technical aspects. Many companies might have their own IT support or technical teams but there are always certain skills such as software development, user design and user experience experts, and designers amongst others, that are not entirely within the company’s talent pool.
Besides, the project can be such that even with in-house technical people on board, you might still need people who have experience in developing a similar product in the past. This is really one of the biggest advantages of outsourcing product development. It ultimately will take less time given the knowledge and experience of the outsourced team.
A third factor that comes into play is maintenance which although is not a part of the product development process itself, it is necessary to keep the product within certain quality standards and avoid post-launch customer issues and brand reputation.