16.04.2020What is Product Development?

Product Development is to the process of turning ideas into products. Which sounds straightforward enough, but actually involves a number of important considerations that follow a logical course of action.

What are the stages?

• Identifying a market opportunity, such as a technology or service innovation.
• Clearly describing the users of the new product.
• Determining precisely what needs the product will fulfil, either directly to a product user or the market generally.
• Coming up with a concept that’s relevant to your specific business, brand and market. 
• Formulating the product ‘roadmap’- A description of the longer-term strategic development and protection programme
• Developing the concept into a viable prototype (known as a minimum viable product, or MVP).  
• Developing branched-out product iterations based on direct feedback from the users and the market.

How do you decide on the right concept?

Start by either identifying opportunities in the market for a product; or if you already have a client who wants a specific product, put in the effort to understand the client’s needs, the product requirements, its application, the intended users, and how the product will go about fulfilling the user’s requirements.

You'll need to rely on design engineers to fully understand and design your product, our engineers will apply their knowledge and experience to create a product that is fully fit for purpose and delivers on the job.

Why do you need a ‘roadmap’?

A product roadmap gives your team the opportunity to easily refer back to the original product strategy, ensuring that they’re on track for your desired end goal. Such a roadmap also allows you to present the product’s strategic goals and plans in a more compelling way to your client.

AEON's project management team is always on hand to ensure the project is running to plan and to raise any concerns along the way.

Is it necessary to actually build a prototype?

By developing a fully working prototype – the MVP - of your final product that you can test in the real world, you can determine if it will be functional in the environment it was designed for. And of course, you can gather valuable feedback to help you evaluate whether that MVP can proceed to the final development stage.

Understanding the products elements and being able to analyse whether it is fit for purpose and delivering the job it's required to do is a key part of this stage. That's where our systems engineering experts are able to navigate the product in development.

Feedback is an important part of this entire process in that it allows you to include the principles of ‘agile product development’ into your roadmap.

What is Agile Product Development?

In simple terms, being ‘agile’ means having the ability to adapt to changes when required. An agile framework gives you the opportunity to produce rapid iterations of your product based on the feedback of actual users, which means you can proceed with far fewer updates and improvements in each release, and incrementally makes for a better product.

AEON’s practice of working closely with our clients through every stage of product development means we are able to clearly define the user’s needs and how we will measure the product’s capabilities at each stage of the process to ensure that we ‘build the system right’.

Interested in our Product Development service?

We work with our clients to deliver value at all stages through the innovation and product development process. Get in touch with our team and see how we could support your next project.