6 Steps of a Successful Product Development Process
Create the best product for your customers with this tool.
With this article, I’ll guide you through the practical steps of a successful product development process, so that you can implement this tool when you’re working on your next product. I’ll use the development of an E-book, as an example.
Do you want to know what your customers exactly want? And also, do you want to be able to fulfill those desires accurately? Does the perfect product actually exist?
I’ve recently found out about a very useful tool that has a step-by-step approach to the following issue: How can be a product perfectly adjusted to the necessities of different customers? Indeed, how can be the voice of the customers heard, and at the same time, linked with the creation of a product?
Quality Function Deployment is a customer-oriented approach to product development. This tool is suitable to fill the gaps between the customer's needs and the manufacturer's capabilities in 6 steps.
With this tool, you can surely provide the best product fit for your customers.
So, let’s jump right into it.
Step 1 — Map out the most important product features
In this step, you will elaborate on the customer attributes. Or, in other words, you’ll find out what your potential customers exactly want.
You can do this by surveying or observing your target group. Create high-quality surveys. Pay attention to asking the right questions from your target group.
An example: You’re working on your first E-book and you wish to know what are the most important features for your customers. Do they prefer bright pictures, artistic pictures, or no pictures in the E-book at all? Which topics would they prefer to read? Do they prefer fiction or non-fiction? How much money would they pay for how many pages? Is the length of the E-book an important feature?
To figure out the answer to these questions, all you have to do is creating a simple survey on the internet, and then sending it out to your potential customers.
Also, figure out whether your product will be accepted at all. If your potential customers won’t buy your product in the end, the whole process might be for nothing. So first, figure out whether your concept will be accepted or not. You can read more about concept testing in this article:
Step 2 — Measure the importance of each customer attribute
When evaluating the results, in the second step, you have to measure the importance of the customer attributes. Are they equally relevant to your potential customers?
Example: Do your customers prefer a short E-book with nice, artistic pictures, or a long one without pictures? Do they want to read about poetry or politics? Would they buy a book about politics for a considerably higher price than a book about poetry?
Take your time to evaluate these results, because they will be crucial for product development. In this step, you literally give strength to each customer attribute.
Step 3 — Can you fulfill the customer attributes?
After receiving and evaluating the result, your task is to consider, whether you can create the desired product.
Example: From the previous results, you figured out that the majority of the people strongly wish to read a middle-long poetry book with artistic pictures. I guess that you created a survey with options that fit your capabilities, so let's assume that you’re able to write a middle-long poetry book and you also have the sources for collecting those artsy pictures from aspiring Instagram influencers. Step 3 is fulfilled. Check :)
Step 4 — Evaluate competitive products
Step 4 is about market analysis. You need to research competitors, offering a similar product to yours. I suggest finding at least 5 successful products with a similar unique selling proposition to yours. Compare them, and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.
Example: In Step 1 and 2, you figured out the preferences of your customers. In step 3 you discovered that with a lot of work, you can actually create the desired E-book. Now, your task is to look for already existing, middle-long poetry books with artistic pictures. You should focus on the ones that look almost the same as your prospective E-book and sell extremely well. Take your time to analyze the pieces thoughtfully.
Step 5 — Determine how far are the technical attributes affecting the customer attributes and Link them together
Your next task is to link each technical attributes (that means your capabilities) to the adequate customer attribute. This step is useful for figuring out, how and which of your capabilities are influencing the final outcome.
Example: You are a writer, so you can write a middle-long poetry book. The fact that you can write such a book is directly linked to the wish of the customers for a poetry book. You are also able to contact artists who would help you out with nice pictures for your E-book. So the fact that you’re capable of contacting the right person for artsy pictures, is kind of directly linked to the product feature with the required artsy pictures.
In this step, you can also reflect on how are your capabilities influencing each other.
So maybe if you’re too tired because of writing the E-book, you’ll not be able to contact an artist in an adequate way, and you might lose a chance of having nice pictures in your E-book.
The exercises in step 5 can help you to become self-conscious about your capabilities. For product development in the case of an E-book, this step might be neglected. But in the case of a more complex product, such as a car, the attributes, and the engineering capabilities are significantly affecting each other, which can also have an impact on the outcome. Therefore, with more complex products the exercises in this step are essential.
Step 6 — Add missing information
Some factors might not be taken into account during product development. Additional issues regarding costs or technical problems might arise. It is important to bear in mind all factors influencing the product development process. In this step, you can reflect on your whole work and fill the missing information.
Example: How much time will you need to write the E-book? How are you going to distribute it to your customers? Which marketing tools are you planning to use?
In this step, you can also determine the next goals that can help you to bring your product to the market. One thing is for sure, you already have the right product in your mind.
