Product Development Practices That Shorten Time to Market

The success of digital products is influenced by a variety of factors. One of the most important aspects of creating a successful product is optimizing development practices to shorten the time to market; with this in mind, development practices can be optimized and resources maximized.

Employing some of the following strategies can help reduce the time to market for your products significantly. Some of the best practices for product development to shorten time to market include creating a product development strategy, prototyping, and using Agile development.

Why is shortening the time to market important?

Time to market is crucial for the success of a product, especially if you have a product in a competitive market. It allows you to get customer feedback quickly, establish the brand for your product, position your product as a market leader, and more.

In addition to this, time to market is one of the biggest competitive advantages. The first company to market is the one that sets the standard for quality, innovation, customer service, and more. With a quick time to market, you can iterate on your products faster and gain more market share.

What are some best practices?

   1. Clear product development strategy

Although this may seem intuitive, many teams start projects without a well-defined product development strategy. This can easily result in many inefficiencies in resources and wasted time.

A defined product development strategy allows teams to anticipate what needs to be done each week in addition to accounting for all the resources available to complete the product. Without a solid strategy, the product may need to be re-iterated countless times before being finalized. This can result in months of delay in regards to time to market.

   2. Agile product development

The Agile methodology for software development is one of the most popular and widely used development methodologies today. Agile uses a mixture of sprints and team roles to maximize the amount of software developed in a short period of time.

The success of Agile development is largely dependent on rapid communication. With Agile, team members must communicate where they are in their roles almost daily; this helps the team stay nimble and iterate the product frequently. Many Agile teams have been able to produce quality products within a matter of weeks.

   3. Prototyping the product

Creating a prototype of the product is a great way to gauge the demands of developing the final product. With a quick prototype, development teams can see what they are working towards and have a clear understanding of product requirements and specifications. A prototype can serve as the blueprint for creating a product and this can lead to better product design and functionality.

To learn more about which product development practices you should deploy to reach the market quicker, talk to an expert here.