There are cases when an idea sounds quite promising but fails after seeing its prototype by actual users. This is where the distance between an idea and its execution becomes the biggest challenge for early-stage companies. Entrepreneurs have to verify whether their issue exists, decide which aspects should be included in the first release, and avoid unnecessary spending on non-existent problems. Using startup software development services could be an effective solution to build such a strategy based on a product, not just programming.
Having a development roadmap
helps startups to set milestones from research till launching a product.
Step 1: Define the Problem First
The first choice should not be
about technology; it should be about the problem that the product solves.
Many founders start out by having
a particular feature in mind, such as a marketplace, an AI-powered personal
assistant, or a mobile app. But features are relevant only if they solve a
problem faced by some users.
Ask four simple questions:
●
Who faces
the problem?
●
How do users
solve their problem now?
●
Why is the
current solution problematic?
●
Why will
users change to your product?
Instead of talking about a
"field service app with scheduling and analytics," reframe the
problem as: "Dispatchers waste too much time organizing appointments for
technicians."
This way, you formulate a problem
that forms the foundation of future product choices.
Step 2: Validate the Idea With Users
Startups need to validate their
assumptions prior to investment in development.
Although competitor analysis will
help to find out whether there are any other solutions available on the market,
the user interviews are more likely to uncover the real value of the problem.
See what the users are doing.
In case people use spreadsheets,
manual solutions or several different tools to solve their problem, the
solution may be really valuable.
Validation also may tell that the
initial idea is wrong and should be reconsidered before the development. This
is much less expensive to redesign the solution than rebuild it later.
It is not necessary to validate
the idea – it just reduces the uncertainties.
Step 3: Define a Focused MVP
After defining the problem,
determine the requirements for the first version.
An MVP should not be a
scaled-down version of the ultimate product. It needs to include sufficient
features that enable users to get one result.
Early products tend to have too
many features because entrepreneurs always want to be prepared for everything.
The better question to ask would
be:
What is the smallest useful
product that will allow us to validate if users like the solution?
For instance, an e-commerce site
can start out with user profiles, listings, booking, and payments. Other things
like analytics or recommendation systems can be developed later.
This way, an MVP reaches users
quickly and their feedback becomes much more clear.
Step 4: Turn the Idea Into Requirements
Once the MVP has been defined,
the startup should have a product roadmap for the development team to work off.
This often involves the creation
of user flows, functional requirements, UI sketches, and constraints.
Every critical workflow should
describe the goals of the user as well as the system.
A basic booking workflow could go
like this:
1.
User
discovers a service.
2.
User picks
an available time.
3.
System
verifies availability.
4.
User
completes the booking process.
Mapping out such workflows will
help expose missing logic even before the development has begun.
It is also important at this
point to identify key integrations and security concerns. Payment processing,
external APIs, and any other sensitive data may affect the architecture of the
system.
At this point the startup should
have a clear backlog of functionality that should be included in the first
release.
Step 5: Choose Technology Around the Product
Technology must enable product
capabilities; it cannot define them.
A new venture will have to
develop either a web product, a mobile application, or both. It will have to
have a backend infrastructure supporting the workflow.
It all depends on the use case.
A simple mobile application might
do just fine with a cross-platform build, but another app might need native
technologies.
The same goes for infrastructure.
An MVP doesn't have to have an
architecture built for a million users right out of the box, but at the same
time, one shouldn't make it harder to scale in the future.
Step 6: Develop in Short Iterations
Founders need to see the work in
progress on a regular basis.
Developing the whole product
before assessing it is an unnecessary risk. If any workflow was misinterpreted,
it will become a problem throughout the whole system.
Iterative development makes such
problems easier to discover.
The team completes a batch of
features, shows the results, receives feedback, and moves on.
Such a process also allows
founders to have more control when things change.
Some user feedback or technical
findings can be taken into account, but changes must always solve a particular
problem.
Step 7: Test Throughout Development
The quality assurance process
does not need to begin only before release.
It is important to test throughout
the development process to enable teams to detect errors when separate features
are small enough to deal with them effectively.
In addition to the normal user
behavior testing, you must consider the scenario in which something goes wrong.
What will happen if the
transaction fails? What will happen if the user inputs some wrong data? Is it
possible for unauthorized parties to view certain information?
Usability is important too.
A certain feature can function
successfully but fail in terms of usability. Usability testing will help you to
detect the problems with navigation and unnecessary actions.
The objective here is not to
create an ideal release, but a reliable product that lets users perform its
basic functionality.
Step 8: Launch to Learn
Product launch doesn’t mark the
endpoint of product development process.
It marks the beginning of
learning about actual usage of the product.
Analytics provide information on
where users drop off in the process, what functionality users use more
frequently and if users get the main result from the product. Customer
discussions could help to understand why such tendencies happen.
This knowledge should direct
future efforts.
For instance, the startup might
find out that optimizing just one workflow is more beneficial than adding
several features.
This is the reason for leaving
the roadmap after product launch open.
Product development turns into a
continuous process of iterating on changes and observing results.
Common Startup Development Mistakes
Even with an excellent map, the
project will fail due to the wrong decisions made from the outset by the team.
One error that often occurs is
the creation of too many items without first getting any feedback. A long list
of features leads to making too many assumptions.
The second error is the selection
of technologies before defining product requirements. Technologies should be
chosen based on the use case, and not just what is trending.
Finally, the roadmapping process
may be too inflexible, especially for early stage products since the more you
learn about users and the market, the more your product will change.
From Roadmap to Product
A startup cannot go from
conception to product in one big jump.
The startup begins by defining
and validating the problem. Next, the strongest assumptions are used to create
an MVP, workflow documentation, selection of appropriate technologies and
building of the product through iteration.
Test helps minimize the risk of
launch, while the actual user behavior post-launch helps guide development.
A pragmatic roadmap gives
startups sufficient structure to advance without believing that they have all
the answers. The ideal roadmap for startups is not the one which foresees
everything about the future of the product but the one which helps learn fast and
build a better product out of those lessons.