What Are The Five Stages of Product Development?

What Is Product Development Process?

A product development process is a series of steps that a business takes to research, design, test and launch a new product.

A well-thought-out and carefully executed product development process will ensure that you get the results you expect from your products.

If the process isn't solid, there's no guarantee you'll get what you need.

A good place to start with developing any new product is understanding the below five stages of product development:

Also read: How Switching From Monoculture To Other Ways Of Farming Can Help?

Source: Unsplash

5 Stages of Product Development Process

Define Stage

The Define stage of the product development process occurs before any real work or effort has been put into designing or creating a prototype for your idea.

In the define stage, you will be putting together a basic overview of what your product needs to accomplish.

This is also where you'll figure out exactly what your product needs to meet customer expectations and solve their problems.

This stage is where you will:

• Brainstorm about the features and benefits of your product.
• Analyze trends in similar products or industries that might affect your ideas.
• Pick the target audience for your idea.
• Define exactly how the product will work (this includes its features).

Concept Stage

The next stage in 5 stages of product development is called Concept development. This is where you start preparing to create a proof-of-concept or demo for your idea.

You'll talk with potential customers and collect data on whether they'd buy it.

The goal here is to prove that there's actually demand for what you're selling before throwing all kinds of resources into developing it further.

At this point, everyone on your team should agree that your concept is solid enough (or not) to move forward with.

The goal of the Concept stage is to:

• Build a demo product for customers to interact with.
• Decide if you need to pivot or adjust your idea before moving forward.
• Test potential marketing strategies and ideas with existing customers.

Build Stage

The Build stage of 5 stages of product development involves creating a working prototype or production-ready version of your solution.

This is where you'll take all the detailed planning, mockups, discussions and other work done in previous steps and put them together into something tangible that could be sold.

The goal here is to validate whether your initial assumptions about your product are correct, find any gaps in its functionality that may crop up later on down the road, and make sure there aren't any obvious problems that would prevent it from being used as intended.

In this stage you'll:

• Create a high-fidelity prototype of your product, if applicable.
• Test the functionality of your product to work out the kinks and ensure it's ready for launch.
• Document all features and functions, so they can be implemented into a production version of your product.
• Validate with customers whether key features will solve their needs.
• Build a production version of your solution which is capable of being sold to customers today.

Launch Stage

Launch stage means actually launching the finalized version of your product to market. At this point, you're ready to start beta testing or ramping up marketing efforts, depending on how you plan to sell.

The goal of this stage is to:

• Market your product to customers and start collecting feedback.
• Further, improve your product based on customer feedback.
• Prepare for launch by hiring key members of the team and putting together an official brand identity.
• Launch your finalized version of the solution into the market to begin generating revenue.

Measure Stage

Finally, in the last stage of product development, we come to Measurement.

This is where you'll be tracking KPIs (key performance indicators) related to specific business goals for your products - like signups, conversions, traffic, email list size etc.

You'll be looking at data acquired throughout previous stages of development and product launch to guide how you continue to improve your product and maximize its impact on the market.

The goal of the Measurement stage is to:

• Continuously track customer feedback as well as key metrics (KPIs).
• Make improvements based on what you've learned from customers and data.
• Determine how successful your solution has been for customers compared to expectations.

Bottom Line

The stages of product development are meant to serve as a guideline for the key things you'll need to go through before launching your product into the market - but also as a reminder that there's no right way to develop something.

There have been many frameworks created over time, each with its own purpose and focus based on what worked best for who at which point in time.

It's important to pick up tips from other methodologies, but also not let yourself get stuck doing everything by the book!

Related Articles

• SEO Tips
• Benefits of SEO
• Seo-friendly-content
• Keyword research
• Impacts of social media