Time is truly of the essence in this high-velocity digital economy. The quicker you get your product to market, the better your chances of beating the competition and winning over consumers.
But most developers feel stuck in the quagmire of development delays, with their product perpetually “coming soon.” If you’re one of them, you’re heard.
A quicker time to market is the holy grail for every tech firm, and we’re here to show you how to get there. When you design the product development stage with optimization rules in mind, the result is a faster time to market that eventually saves your resources.
We understand the frustration of lagging due to slower development cycles, and that’s why we’re here with the best practices to bypass it.
Let us help fast-track your success so you can enter the market early on!
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Implement Agile Product Development Practices
Agile product development breaks your development process into smaller, manageable “sprints” and allows teams to work simultaneously on different aspects of the product. Such an approach creates a highly efficient, streamlined workflow with minimal hurdles.
Think of a novel fitness app. Without agile, your development process might be linear—design, development, testing, and deployment. This method could take months before you have a usable product.
But if you use agile, you run multiple sprints—design, develop, and test a login feature in one sprint while your colleagues might be working on tracking features in another. You essentially have parts of your product ready and tested in a short span that can dramatically speed up your development cycle.
Agile also focuses on delivering value as it encourages frequent feedback and adjustments. If the login feature from the example we’re talking about doesn’t resonate with early testers, you can quickly pivot and improve. That’s an efficient and flexible way to develop products that meet user needs.
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Use Rapid Prototyping Techniques
Rapid prototyping lets you create a basic, working model of your product as quickly as possible, and it doesn’t have to be polished or feature-rich. The idea is to have something tangible that gives you a real sense of your product to see how it comes together.
Say you’re developing an innovative drone. You have a fantastic vision, but since it’s a complex product, there’s plenty of room for error. So instead of waiting until you’ve built the entire drone to test its functionality, you create a basic model, say just the drone’s body and basic flight controls via rapid prototyping.
You test it, learn from it, and iteratively build upon it. Soon, you have a working drone that’s undergone a series of tests and improvements—long before the traditional product development approach would have.
Rapid prototyping helps you catch design flaws early and saves valuable resources. After all, it’s easier (and cheaper) to correct issues on a basic model than on a full-fledged product.
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Employ Cross-Functional Team Structures
The traditional development team structure is often siloed, i.e., designers with designers, developers with developers, and so forth.
However, a cross-functional team mixes things up. It brings together professionals with different skill sets; designers, developers, product managers, and more—under one umbrella. The result is a powerhouse of diverse talents that can handle all aspects of product development.
Suppose you’re developing an eCommerce website. In a traditional team setup, the design team might create a brilliant user interface without considering the complexities of back-end integration. Such a strategy can lead to a time-consuming back-and-forth between teams.
However, in a cross-functional team, the designer and the developer communicate to ensure the interface looks great and works seamlessly with the back end. It eventually leads to a faster development process. Also, cross-functional teams breed innovation. When diverse perspectives come together, they spark creative solutions that a homogenous team might not think of.
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Automate Routine Development and Testing Tasks
While we’re talking about speed, let’s not overlook one of the biggest time-savers in product development, automation. Let’s say you’re creating a mobile app, and each time a new feature is added, you need to ensure it doesn’t break anything.
In a traditional setup, this step involves a time-consuming process of manual testing, i.e., checking the new feature, revisiting old ones, testing different scenarios, and so forth.
But with automated testing, you can program a suite of tests once and run them as many times as you need with the click of a button. Mechanizing these tasks frees up your team to focus on feature development rather than routine checks.
Automation can permeate other areas of development as well. From automatic code formatting to continuous integration and deployment, automating these routine tasks can significantly reduce your development timeline and increase efficiency.
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Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, known collectively as CI/CD, can also boost product development speed.
Think of a situation where you are developing a mobile banking application. Without CI/CD, developers might work on different features independently and integrate their work occasionally. This infrequent integration often leads to integration issues, bugs, and delays.
But CI/CD lets developers integrate their work regularly, often several times a day. This frequent integration means you can identify and address issues early, reducing the chances of last-minute surprises and delays.
Moreover, Continuous Delivery automates the delivery of applications to selected infrastructure environments. It ensures your application is always in a release-ready state.
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Design for Manufacturability (DFM)
Design for Manufacturability (DFM) means to consider the manufacturing process during the product design phase, ensuring a smooth transition from design to production, thus speeding up the time to market.
Say you’re designing a new smartwatch. Without considering DFM, you may come up with an innovative design, but it might be complex and costly to manufacture. Now, suppose you take manufacturability into account during the design phase. You can come up with a design that’s not just innovative but also easy to produce. That means less time struggling with manufacturing complexities and more time delivering top-quality products to the market.
DFM encourages designers and manufacturers to work closely and leverage their expertise to create efficient designs. It reduces the potential back-and-forth between design and manufacturing, saving time, and resources and, ultimately, helping you get your product into the customers’ hands quicker.
In A Word
Your ability to swiftly develop and deliver high-quality products is crucial if you want a strong standing in the market. Strategic methodologies like agile, rapid prototyping, and cross-functional teams equip you with robust tools to streamline your product development process.
Remember, it’s not just about speeding up the process but creating a better approach that aligns with your product vision, team dynamics, and customer expectations. So bring your ideas to life faster with a smarter plan!
Get in touch today to learn more!
