The Product Development Process

By Product Management,

Quoting Steve Jobs here – You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new

As a Product Manager, you don’t live by authority. Neither do you have any exact definition of what a Product Manager is. But there is a common mindset about Product Managers visualizing them who stand between UX, tech and business in a Venn diagram.

The product manager is the one who orchestrates the different product development stages like a mozart.

The list gathers information from various resources and my personal experience as a Product Owner.

  1. Conceive the Idea – The best form of ideas are from user pain-points. How a problem is conceived plays an important role in converting that idea into a solution.
  2. Planning – The question is how do I start. Let me list down some jargon here. Market Research, customer surveys, deciding on technical stack. The plan determines how soon you visualize providing the solution to your customers.
  3. Development – Now that you have planned everything, select the best delivery model that suits your team. It can be either Lean, Scrum or Kanban. Developing Product Backlog Items help prioritise features for your minimum viable product. Talk to your team and the stakeholders involved to set a clear product vision.
  4. Iteration – Develop Fast to Fail Fast. This is why I quoted Steve Jobs at the start of this article. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new. Iterate your product over metrics, feedback received, etc. Inspect and Adapt and move fast.
  5. The Big Launch – Public launch of a product ties up with multiple stakeholders in order to set clear vision for your customers on how you have solved their problem. Imagine the launch fails to communicate what the team or a company has developed. Make it Big and Loud.
  6. Maintenance – Check if it is making the maximum ROI, have we reached the maximum customer base for this product or do I need to go back to step 4.

The product development process does not follow the set of standardized steps but rather it somewhat goes through these phases.

And did someone say the Product Manager’s job is easy? Think Again !