It begins with the ideation stage until the new product is launched. However, the lack of clarity makes this process challenging for most startups and businesses.
Every aspect needs clarity, from what functions a new product can have to the development approach you can use.
Understanding the target audience, current market demand, and what your competitors offer is key to planning new product development.
This article will focus on development approaches, challenges, and expert tips to help you plan, develop, and launch a new product.
What is New Product Development?
New product development(NPD) brings a vision or idea to life or even improves an existing entity on a functional level. Developing a product can involve building one from scratch or tweaking existing products for a better experience.
It is one of the crucial aspects that many companies focus on to extend customer offerings.
NPD goes beyond designing and developing an idea. It encompasses planning, designing, developing, deploying, and marketing a new product.
There are several reasons for companies to invest in NPD like,
- Keeping up with the change in customer demands
- Bringing new features and providing more services
- Entering a new market that is not serviceable with existing products
- Create new revenue streams by building new products.
Whatever your reason for investing time, resources, and money into the new product development project, there are specific considerations to make.
Planning and executing each stage is crucial, especially if you are developing an idea into a full-fledged product.
7 Stages of New Product Development
When you develop a new product, the process can vary from others based on what approach is used.
However, you can break the entire process into seven stages, which are typical for most organizations.
1. Generating ideas
Generating ideas is a stage where you discover new concepts and avenues. Problem research is especially central to idea generation.
Questions like what is the main problem that your solution will solve? Or how to solve the problem, keeping a user-centric approach can clog your mind.
However, with effective brainstorming and market research, you can generate more innovative ideas to solve a problem.
So here are some techniques that you can use for idea generation
1.1 Mind Mapping
This method helps teams sort out complex data related to a specific concept.
You can start with a central idea, like a product’s name, and draw branches for meta elements like design, marketing, development process, etc.
Further, smaller branches for specific tasks should be added. It allows teams to visualize how different elements in the ideation process are connected.
1.2 Blue Sky Thinking
Blue sky thinking is a brainstorming technique where team members generate the maximum number of new ideas without worrying about feasibility.
Ideas can be better initially, sparking newer and bolder decisions. This approach lets your team members express new ideas without focusing on the outcome.
1.3 Brainwriting
This method focuses on acquiring different perspectives on new product development. Every idea is jotted down on a sheet of paper.
The sheet is passed around in the circle, and teammates test each other’s ideas, adding new perspectives.
1.4 SCAMPER
SCAMPER stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, and Makeover, which helps you generate new ideas or reimagine existing products.
This method is best for improving existing products because it allows teams to think of a service or product from multiple perspectives.
1.5 Synectics
This is the method used to remove idea blocks that every team experiences. Most teams follow specific patterns, ending up with the same repeated set of ideas.
Using synthetics, you can create unrelated analogies and boost creativity.
You can generate different ideas using the above methods, but screening them is crucial because only some ideas are worth your time and money.
2. Screening ideas
In this stage, teams analyze many ideas based on impact, effort, and feasibility. Screening the ideas is the key to moving to the next phase of strategizing new product development.
So, what’s the most optimal approach for screening ideas?
There is no one method that you can follow. However, using multiple approaches and a little A/B testing will be enough.
For example, you can use a SWOT analysis of each idea and a competitive analysis.
Further, you can test each idea in different scenarios and analyze the results with pre-defined metrics. You must align each metric with the key business objective and market demands.
3. Creating a product strategy
Once you select an idea, the next and most crucial step is creating a new product development strategy.
This will concisely define the product’s requirements, positioning, features, and benefits. Your strategy document will be a steadfast anchor for the next stage- roadmap creation.
4. Building a product roadmap
Creating a product development roadmap is simply an action plan for your project. It will outline the activities, functionalities, and short—and long-term efforts needed.
Creating the roadmap is crucial to new product development. If your team has a roadmap, the efforts will go right.
So, even after spending so much time and money, you will not have the results expected at the start of the project.
5. Prototyping
The next stage is prototyping, which involves creating and testing a prototype of your new product.
You need to ensure that the entire testing process is comprehensive, and this is where prototyping efficiency becomes pivotal.
Create multiple prototypes and conduct A/B tests to better understand product functions and performance.
6. Testing
Once the prototype is ready, extensive tests are essential for optimal results. You must ensure your product’s functionality is tested well before users interact.
Imagine your product being showcased to users; a bug simply makes it redundant. Recently, MKBHD or Marques Brownlee made a video reviewing the Humane AI Pin, which destroyed the reputation of this new product.
Such cases show the importance of testing. If you don’t test your product well, considering different scenarios, your startup can suffer grave reputational damage.
7. Product launch
An English phrase commonly used in conversations is “first impression is your last impression.”
This is true not just for a person but also for a product. It will harm your business objectives if you can’t make an impression with the product launch.
This is an inherent process, as all your teams, including sales, marketing, and product delivery, will align the brand’s final messaging according to the roadmap.
So, you must have a solid new product development roadmap for optimal launch.
While creating a roadmap, you must also focus on designing, developing, and delivering the product.
Each activity needs to align with the kind of product you want your target audience to perceive.
4 Main Types of Product Development
Product development types can differ based on the specific industry or domain your startup belongs to.
For example, you can choose from software product development types if you are a tech business or startup.
These types are,
1. Waterfall Development Approach
The waterfall development approach is the conventional method in which your team follows a specific sequence.
It is a process that involves conceptualization, initiation, analytics, design, development, testing, quality assurance, deployment, and maintenance.
All the above steps will be in a specific sequence. To develop a new product, your ideation stage must be executed appropriately.
Similarly, every stage will depend on the previous one. This method suits startups with thorough, accurate, and specific project details. With a waterfall development approach, there is no room for flexibility.
2. Agile Development Approach
The agile development approach has transformed the way new products are developed.
It is an iterative and incremental approach in which teams develop products to ensure continuous improvements.
Startups looking to develop software-based new products can significantly leverage the agile development approach.
Software teams can also use this approach to ensure regular feedback integration. This also allows startups to extensively test new products before launching them so that users can interact with them.
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3. Lean Development
Lean development is an approach that focuses on minimizing resource waste and maximizing value.
Startups can optimize resources and reduce costs through this approach, especially for new product development.
You can create lean teams that offer continuous improvements, ensuring efficiency when developing a new product.
Leaner teams can work faster because such a structure makes approvals for product design and roadmaps easier.
With leaner teams, the hierarchical structure is smaller, making your decision-making process rapid.
This is crucial for any business, as transforming the idea quickly into a product can be fruitful.
4. Kanban Approach
Kanban is an approach to project management that visualizes project management with streamlined workflows.
It follows lean manufacturing practices and focuses on improving efficiency, collaboration, and productivity.
New product development requires a transparent and adaptable approach. Kanban development helps startups enhance product efficiency, eliminate bottlenecks, and deliver more value.
Here are some key examples to help you understand how these types of new product development are developed.
Example of New Product Development
Understanding successful new product development efforts can provide valuable insights on how you can replicate the same.
Here are some examples of practical strategies and practices in the NPD process.
1. Netflix
From the humble DVD rental business, Netflix has evolved into one of the most prominent OTT streaming services.
This reveals their flexibility in considering market trends and consumer needs.
However, the evolution of Netflix is attributed to the NPD process, where the following strategies took centerstage,
- Netflix’s strategy focuses on one main principle: decreasing user friction and constantly adapting to this space based on these insights.
- Netflix’s transition from licensing to creating original programs and a consumer-driven comprehension of the subscription model-related changes have been pivotal.
This has resulted in the formation of an evergreen product, which has been successful for several years.
2. HubSpot
HubSpot was a CRM software with features for effective marketing and sales automation.
Having received the customers’ data from the CRM, HubSpot realized what features could be added concerning the commonality of marketing, sales, and support.
Further, its Inbound Marketing strategies were closely tied to product objectives, and consequently, the tools created reflected the audience’s needs.
Such approaches helped HubSpot create a well-integrated ecosystem that organizes CRM and content for marketing.
3. Dropbox
Dropbox began as a file-sharing service and has evolved into a robust organizational tool that addresses team collaboration issues.
It uses user feedback to identify pain points and has rolled out features like version history and Dropbox Paper to enhance collaboration.
Dropbox encouraged innovation based on user interactions with the product by keeping an open feedback loop for all team members.
This focus on turning user pain points into actionable features enabled Dropbox to grow its product suite, including the successful launch of Dropbox Business for teams.
Every successful startup or business creating a new product has faced challenges. This can be due to a need for clarity in scope or accuracy when estimating development efforts.
Three Challenges Teams Encounter in the New Product Development Process
Developing new products is a prerogative for many enterprises and startups to meet market demands.
However, such enterprises must overcome multiple challenges affecting the final product’s quality.
Here are three significant challenges teams encounter during the NPD process:
1. Clarity of Requirements
A significant challenge that most startups and enterprises face while developing a new product is to finalize the requirements.
Why is this so important?
So, the requirements must first be defined if you are developing a new product using a conventional approach like waterfall development.
Without a clear definition of requirements, the process will become suboptimal, leading to low-quality products.
Even if you use a flexible approach like agile, clearly defined objectives are essential to maximize gains.
However, most teams need help to create comprehensive requirement documents. The key reason is the need for more clarity on the new product’s core functionality and features.
2. Estimating the development effort
If your requirements are unclear, the scope of your project will be vague, leading to the second most significant challenge: “Development estimations.”
Estimating your development efforts can be tricky, especially if you need to know the project’s scope and requirements.
You also need extensive information on what features the product will need before estimating the development efforts.
You need to know
- Tools required
- Resources needed
- Workforce requirements
- Complexity of functions
- Definition of key objectives
Once you have all this information, estimating the development efforts can be easier.
Siloed teams
The modern era of new product development has been pushing the culture of distributed structure.
In such an approach, several distributed teams work independently on specific tasks, which are then merged to offer a suite of products.
While this seems an efficient approach, it leads to the challenge of siloed teams with tools exclusive to specific team members only.
The best way to overcome this challenge of siloed tools is to embrace the DevOps approach. It allows you to break the boundaries of teams and create a unified team.
Another key benefit of using the DevOps approach is faster development of new products.
However, before embracing the DevOps philosophy, you must understand precisely how long your product will take to develop.
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How Long Does New Product Development Take?
Typically, any new product will take a few weeks to sometimes more than nine months, depending on specific business needs.
If you consider digital product development, it can take 1-3 months, depending on its complex features.
Some of the crucial factors to consider while estimating the timeline for new product development are,
1. Ideation Time
is the total time spent on brainstorming, idea generation, feasibility tests, and finalizing the scope. This stage is a significant one for most startups, and that is why it can take more time.
This stage is crucial for the core business definition and drawing a roadmap for the entire NPD process. So, the extra time you need to complete this stage is justified.
2. Design Time
is the time needed to design a product, which can be between 2 and 3 weeks. This stage allows businesses to envision their product and ensure a superior user experience.
Therefore, whatever time you spend on product design needs to be focused on improving the user’s knowledge and interaction with it.
3. Development Time
is one of NPD’s most significant time-consuming processes. Estimating development time can be complex, especially using an iterative approach.
Agile methodology involves continuous testing and development, which means several phases of developing and testing an iteration.
However, if you want an estimate, a simple product can’t take around 1-2 months to build. Complex products need more time.
Expert Tips for New Product Development
Overcoming the challenges of new product development takes efforts beyond NPD’s usual activities.
It requires understanding the target audience, improved collaborations, and optimal resource usage.
1. Understand the customer
It is no rocket science for any startup or enterprise to understand that product development needs to be customer-driven.
Understanding the target audience becomes essential for new product development if not a staple.
Conduct extensive customer surveys to understand their pain points and build a unique selling point (USP) targeting your product.
The USP must align with the customer pain points to ensure maximum market impact.
2. In-depth Competitor Analysis
Knowing your competition is the second-best approach to NPD. Your target customers may already be engaging with competitors or existing brands.
Analyzing your competitors will help you gain insights into existing products’ great and bad aspects.
Competitor analysis will also help you ensure the product has all the functions needed to compete in the market.
And this is not just an on-off activity; you need to continuously monitor competitors throughout the NPD process and even after launching it.
3. Use MVP Approach
This is the best expert approach in the current era of extreme criticism that your product can attract at launch.
A Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, is an approach where you first build a shippable product version.
It will have essential features, but new versions will introduce non-functional features. So, users will have a lighter version of the product that will provide them with all the necessary functions and features.
It allows startups and enterprises to get feedback on the basic features and quickly adjust to improve user experience.
4. Define Key Roles
Whether using the DevOps approach or not, you must understand the importance of defining roles.
New product development is a team effort, and your NPD process can only improve with a proper definition of roles across teams.
Defining each member’s responsibility will help ensure better task and resource allocation, improving productivity and low-cost development.
5. Focus on Product Lifecycle Management
Your NPD process needs to be completed when you launch the product. But it begins at the launch.
Yes, product development and launch are just the initiation of a lifecycle where each stage is essential.
Establish a dedicated team to monitor product performance and insights from customer feedback.
This team will ensure that all customer feedback is integrated repeatedly to provide an enriched experience and that product performance is up to the mark.
Conclusion
New product development has several challenges, from lack of clarity to estimating accurate development efforts.
However, you can create a successful product with a streamlined and efficient NPD process.
However, you need not just analyze your target audience but keep tabs on what competitors are working on while constantly creating a product that fits the market.
Doing all of these while you are still a startup can be challenging. You will have to create dedicated teams to ensure continuous improvements.
Further, you must develop prototypes and extensively test the product before launching it.
Even after the launch, you must maintain efficiency throughout product lifecycle management.
Zennaxx can help you avoid all such hassles through custom product development solutions. Get an estimate for your new product development now.
