How we develop products for 3.2M users

An 8-step, start-to-finish guide for your next big release

For the last year, we’ve been working on a new idea.

It took our team 326 days to bring this new idea to life, but it took me 10 years to create a smart product development strategy — to find the best way to dream big, work smart and give our customers the very best we have to offer.

For the first five years at JotForm, we toiled in a vacuum, then experienced failure and heartache by launching less-than-perfect products to our entire user base.

For the next five years, we continuously released small improvements. There were no big launches. No PR. No news or excitement or long-term targets. The result was a cluttered product that looked outdated, and users who thought we had abandoned them.

Finally, we learned how to make big plans, while still providing small, continuous improvements. We discovered how to develop great products.

From our team structure to built-in experimentation periods, this approach has dramatically improved our product. We also feel like we’re working in partnership with our customers.

So why did it take so long to formalize our approach?