A lot many books and free resources are available online on how to build a successful product. However, building a successful tech product presents a different picture together. Why do many tech products fail in the market? Reasons are aplenty; a successful tech product in the marketplace has certain traits and follow a development cycle, if effective, can take the product to the next level.
The first logical step towards building a new product is an idea. Yes, everything starts with an idea, as conventional wisdom goes. How can you generate an idea? Look for problems around you. There are literally thousands of problems that are left unfixed. You can’t solve each and every problem of course. But you can definitely take one out of these bunch of problems, analyse it and look out for a possible solution.
The problem-solving method is followed by the idea generation process. At this point, the product developer should be looking on the commercial aspects of developing the idea into a viable product that carries a price tag in line with its promised value to potential clients. To conclude, a product can be an outcome of one idea or a combination of related ideas. So it’s important for the product developer to generate as many as ideas possible for effectiveness.
Second, perform a market research on the product that you’re going to develop. Constructive feedback helps in the development process by a long way. Ensure the feedback is specific, concise and actionable. Getting the right feedback is the most effective way for improving upon your product build. Next, create a mock-up of your product which is nothing but a realization of the actual concept. This process is followed by the development of Minimum Viable Product (MVP), a version of the product-in-development which is validated based on the customer behaviour with minimum effort. Now based on the feedback in the MVP phase, the product is iterated for commercial success. Note here that the development team has to iterate fast to remain in the skin of the game.
Review the newer version of the product and test it on your target audience. Reiterate until it meets the product demand. Release the beta version of the product (after quality assurance test, of course) with future enhancements aimed at user’s growing needs. This is the simplest product development cycle. You can add one or two layers to the stages discussed above. The overall objective is to create a tech product that first solves the needs of the targeted audience, and surpasses customer expectations without exceeding the planned development costs.
