Software Product development is much more challenging than software services. Product development needs much higher level of domain expertise, technological expertise and long term commitment to develop the product. In addition of technical competence it takes a very high level of marketing competence to succeed.
The initial team that is drafted to develop a new product will have to address various marketing and technical issues first - before starting the actual product development even starts (a.k.a. coding)
These steps are very important in new product development and must not be compromised upon.
Step-1: Product Definition & Product Positioning
Step-2: Product Features & Quality Imperatives
Step-3: Product Road map & Release Cadence
Step-4: Product Technology & Architecture
Step-5: Project Resource Plan
Step-6: Product Deployment Options
Step-7: Product Marketing Plan
Step-8: Financial Project Plan
Note that product development is a completely cross-functional effort. Software engineering, Technology, Marketing, Finance & HR management roles have to work together to build a successful product.
Step-1: Product Definition and Positioning
The first step in software product development is the clear definition of the product:
What is the product?
What problems it will solve?
Who are the users?
What is competitive advantage?
What are the distinguishing features?
Answering these five questions will give a clear definition of the product itself - which is essential first step for new product development. Answering these questions requires deep domain knowledge and deep understanding the market needs. If product definition is not done properly, then the resulting product will be like a solution searching for a problem! (Which is bound to fail in market)
Step-2: Product Features & Quality Imperatives
Once a product is defined, the next step is to define the features and functions the product must provide. The product features and functions must be defined in terms of the intended users. For an enterprise product, this requires deep domain knowledge of (potential) customers and customer work flows. It is not uncommon to involve people from potential customer industries for this. For a consumer product, focus must be on good user experience while meeting the user needs.
In addition to user requirement features, there are other additional features that must be considered. Government regulatory requirements & Industry standards Requirements. For example HIPPA, SOX, PCI, DCI, ISI, ITAR, FCC, etc., are defined government and industry standards that the product must meet - else it will not be allowed to sell!
In an ideal world, one can develop a product which has all the required features and with best quality in time. However, real world imposes has its own limitations. Not all features can be developed in time nor can the product meet all the quality requirements. This implies a quality Vs Features tradeoffs.
As part of product features definition, the quality requirements must also be identified. One needs to answer: Is more like a Proof-of-concept? Or Is it an enterprise class product? Or is it a Consumer grade product? For each class of product - there are different quality imperative that must be addressed while defining the product features.
Step-3: Product Road map & Release Cadence
Once product features is defined, it will become clear that not all features can be developed in one release, especially in an complex enterprise product. Even in case of simple consumer product, the market conditions and user requirements will change with time - and the product needs to adapt to meet those changes.
Product with reasonable quality/stability and that can be developed in a reasonable time frame - form the first version of the product.
Other features & functions will have to be developed and released in a phased manner. This is called as a product roadmap. Product roadmap is an intended plan of how all the intended features will be developed and when it will be released.
Release cadence has to be defined in this plan - so that it give an indication as to when a particular feature will be released: is it coming in next 6 months or one year or 18 months etc. Having a planned releases helps in several ways: One, it helps in fixing bugs found at customer site, Two it helps in modifying features to better match user requirements, Third, it helps to add new features incrementally which that helps in project management and also helps to avoid scope creep on a single release.
Planning the product roadmap & release cadence helps in next steps.
Step-4: Product Technology & Architecture
In software product development, choosing the right product technology and platforms is very important and can make or break a product in market. In large organizations, a separate CTO - Chief Technology Office is often established, which determines the right technology choices. For example, when developing an enterprise application, choosing a right Database, choosing a right middleware, the OS platforms etc., - could make/break a product.
Software Technology also refers to development tools such as compilers, version control tools, testing tools, performance testing tools etc.
Software Technology also refers to choice of using opensource code or licensed utilities (JBOSS, Jinfonet etc.)
Product Architecture forms the foundation of the product. Depending on the intended market and time to market, proper architectural choices has to be made. Once the product architecture is finalized and product development starts, it becomes very expensive to change the product architecture. Product architecture has to be very carefully planned and designed.
When it comes to making choices of product technology and architecture, it is always good to look ahead and choose newer/scalable/flexible technology & architecture, so that, when needed, changes or upgrades & addition of new features can be easily done on the product to suit market needs.
Product Technology and Architecture also determines the resources needed for new product development.
Step-5: Project Resource Plan
Once the roadmap and features are identified, it is now easier to plan for the required resources needed to develop the product. In a software product development, the biggest resource are engineers & software development tools: Servers/computers & software tools.
Identifying the scale & timing of resources needed and by when helps in the next step: the Financial Project Plan.
Step-6: Product Deployment Options
Software products often have several deployment options. Typically, a consumer grade software product should work right out of the box. Customers should be able to install it themselves and start using it.
In the world of cloud & mobile apps, customer expect ease of deployment as a basic requirement. For such products, the product distribution platforms (App Stores, or Web Site or Retail distribution) has be decided.
In case of enterprise products - there is a whole lot of configuration & customization that needs to be done for each customer. In such a case, Product plan must also determine which of the features should be offered out-of-the-box and which features are to be customized at customer site. Ideally, all the common components should be out of the box and all customizable components must be done through config files - i.e., no compilation of custom code at customer site.
Identifying the product deployment options helps in Product marketing Plan
Step-7: Product Marketing Plan
Products have to be pushed to the customer or Customers can be induced to pull in the product from the distribution channels. The choice of Push or Pull determines the marketing strategy.
Some products can be sold via partnerships or by bundling with other products. For example, Microsoft can bundle Lync with its Office suite, SAP can bundle Hana with its R/3 Suite etc. Google Maps gets bundled with Andriod etc.
In some cases, the product can be sold via partnerships. A partner company may choose to sell the software along with its suite of products. For example Cisco sells HP Opsware along with its suite of network management tools.
In case of pull strategy, customers have to be induced to buy the product. For customers to buy a product, they must first be made aware of the product - via advertisements or marketing communications, and if the customer likes what they hear about the product, they may opt to buy it. For example Apple Pages, or Whatsapp or WeChat, or Intuit or Turbotax etc. These products are heavily marketing via different channels and customers will buy from retail channels.
Selecting a right marketing plan has a big impact on determining the financial plan.
Step-8: Financial Project Plan
It takes money to develop new products. The total amount of money and the timing of expenses has to be carefully worked out and planned. In large companies, funding may not be a problem - provided the product business plan is complete & agreed upon by relevant stake holders. In case of small/medium size companies, finance will be a major constrain - which impacts every aspect of new product development plan.
Closing Thoughts
In this article, I have put financial project plan as a last step. In many cases, financial plan becomes the first necessary step - which then determines the scale & scope of new product development projects.
For sake of simplicity and ease of understanding, I have presented Software product development plan as a 8 step waterfall process, which is an ideal situation. But in reality, all steps happen in parallel & in iterative process. Developing new software products is never such a clean & smooth process. It requires lots of deliberations and analysis - which will make these steps happen in parallel and also in iterative process - where each planning stage has to be revisited iteratively all through product development life cycle.
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