Software Product Development: It's Not As Difficult As You Think

Posted by Stephen Foster on July 5th, 2019

Is software product development time-consuming? Yes. Are there challenges along the way? Absolutely. But, if you plan your work, and work your plan, software product development isn’t as difficult as it may seem on the surface.

Correlate ideation to real-world metrics

Ideas come and go; they’re chimerical while floating around in our minds, but that doesn’t mean they’ll benefit your target customer. Even if one of the “value components” you’re delivering is demand creation, there should be a visible market signal that surfaces during the market research phase. Tap into your subject matter experts (SMEs) at the operational, tactical, and strategic levels.

Also, there is a ton of authoritative and readily available market research from outside sources (McKinsey, Deloitte, etc.). Combining this with your internal customer/consumer analytics will help you determine the essential software product requirements and their priority level, establish or refine your product KPIs, and guide you through the next phase of best practices in software product development.

Reinforce the execution phase of your development lifecycle

Failed ideas are expensive lessons, and the execution phase is where all too many products fail. Regardless of the Agile approach, you’re still going to need a plan for managing time, cost, and scope (yes, even if you’re within a Scrum environment). Within those “Triple Constraints” are quality assurance, risk management, and stakeholder engagement monitoring; these have a direct impact on your product’s success.

This doesn’t mean micro-management.

Rather, the focus here is planning and implementing your risk response for each facet of product delivery, which includes factoring in the possibility of a weak marketing plan (if your customers don’t know how the product will benefit them, e.g., clear messaging and the right marketing channels, then the risk of failure is heightened). Your product KPIs will serve as an internal monitoring tool, as long as your metrics are updated frequently, that can be designed to reveal those aforementioned “market signals.” The earlier you can clearly see that it’s time to change course and move to your risk response plan, the more agile your product development will be, thus increasing the likelihood of success.