How to produce the right product development strategy?

Startups are an absolute blast for those with a deep desire to develop something that breaks standard stereotypes and gets a lot of attention. However, how many founders out there has an ideal app/web platform solution in their head labeled “best product ever”? And how many of you think that people will just go and grab your solution like penicillin? Unfortunately, the reality is much, much harsher than you might think.

Perhaps you can find at least a dozen people who got interested in your product and just won’t forget about it. But what of it? It won’t bring you rapid growth nor the potential for the other app development process. Thus, one can combine the facts and say: The code itself is nothing and cannot be considered a finished product.

A real operating business that is dynamically generating sales has a healthy and profitable business model along with a workable application. How can you achieve such confident results without knowing that your solution might fail midway through the active stage of the product design process? To answer that question, JetRuby has prepared a free tool for every enthusiast who asked himself this kind of problem: Product Development Strategy Session!

What is a Product Development Strategy?

As we mentioned above, the app’s code or the platform itself practically means absolutely nothing, and most businesses fail miserably without proper preparations. For that reason, JetRuby has constructed a Product Development Strategy Session.

This is an entirely free meeting specifically created to assist both young startups and mature entrepreneurs. To properly adjust and coordinate the vision for implementing your idea into reality. Most entrepreneurs or startups sometimes have two milestones that they are continually bumping into during the early development processes. They are:

1. Lack of strong technical and/or business requirement points
2. Ignorance of digital product development lifecycle specificity.

In short, you tell us your business idea, and we will prepare the corrections and estimations for its implementation to avoid the highlighted mistakes. And to get the most precise estimate during this session, we recommend the following:

1. If you have any app visual aspects, please provide them to our team.
2. Try to compare and analyze your idea and the idea of your product competitors.
3. Try to understand your business model monetization

“But what exactly will I get after this meeting?” or better, “How will I benefit from it?”

The session itself will last just 1 hour where you’ll be talking to our business analyst and the head of our business development. During the meeting, our team and you will be going through the following critical project aspects:

1. Create a very high-level user story map while referencing high-quality app practices and basing it on your product requirements. This helps to identify the missing app gaps and form a unified insight into your business product.
2. Build a Product Evolution Canvas, where our team will systemize all product data and prioritize product development according to your business goals.
3. Detail the user story map with a concrete summary of each feature connected with each relevant product development process along with the monthly deadline estimations during the MVP process.

By the end of the session, we’ll provide you with the essentials you will find useful for your further product development process. Here is what you will get by the end of this session:

1. A priority list of functionalities that your app should have during your first product release.
2. Feedback on technical and business requirements that shows what exactly should be adjusted or added.
3. A ballpark estimation of your entire project.
4. Further suggestions upon the next steps.

These results will be presented during the kick-off meeting. While all of the context preparations will be done one day prior. If you want to get a professional and expert assessment on your product vision, just leave an inquiry on our Product Development Strategy Session, and we’ll schedule your meeting immediately.

After the session is complete, we will proceed with further steps for creating the right product development strategy. We’ll move to the Design and Discovery Phase. Design and Discovery is an initial stage for any idea that defines your future product’s vision and guides you towards the correct development process. Where in its end, a project plan will be produced for your MVP!

A word from our Head of Business Development

We decided to discuss some of the most frequently asked questions that our clients raise during various meetings. Who knows, maybe you have had similar problems like that in your mind. But you didn’t receive any answers yet, or perhaps they are too vague. So, take a look, and hopefully, any of your uncertainties or doubts will be cast away.

– Let’s say a client says: “I have an X amount of budget, but I wish to implement a product which costs ten times more than my allocated budget.” How exactly could we assist him?

– The thing is, for producing the most precise and neat future product vision, one has to understand and prioritize the core amount of functionalities that could give real value to your potential customers since they don’t need all of your functionalities all at once.

They will be using at most one or two main features. Let your audience feel and try your product first. Then observe the results: whether people like it or not. And only if everything is positive, then you can add all of the additional functions after you’ll confirm that your product has reached a specific point of success.

– How can we guide a client if he might say the following: “I have a very great idea, but everyone keeps estimating it in XXX million dollars.”?

– All of the vast and massive projects we develop gradually. There is no point in doing everything at once.

The very first thing that you need to consider and weigh is that the business idea or a product launch plan that you are trying to implement is demandable by your target market. Make adequate research on your competitors and product analogs. Seek what exactly attracts and keeps the attention of users at it.

After you do that, you’ll understand how the foundation of your idea can work out. You will also figure out how to make your product much more valuable and unique than your competitors.

– “I want to implement a complete, full-scale product and release it to the market. I don’t think I need a half-baked one.” Why is this specific approach wrong?

– The issue here lies in this stereotypical thinking “the more money I’ll invest, the more successful my product will become”. It doesn’t work that way. There is no point in any investment in something that didn’t show its value or at least a bare potential.

Even if you are 100% confident in your business idea’s success, there are no guarantees that you won’t rework some features that do not resonate with your target audience. Various methodologies were created to avoid these kinds of milestones and adapt to constant market changes (SCRUM, Agile, etc.).

In 21 century, most modern customers are very demanding. So you have to continually observe and coordinate your project towards the best user experience practices. That also includes the constant dynamic competition processes since every massive project equals a long-term development process.

Even during half of the year of active development, the product may already lose all of its relevance. If you are developing your business project to optimize your enterprise processes, then it’s all easy peasy. However, the customers located in the open market are very demanding, so you just have to keep up a high adaptability speed for any changes.

– How much budget does a client need for developing an MVP?

Typically, to cover all of the app’s core and necessary aspects for the market to accept it steadily. One would probably need around 20,000$ per platform, be it a web, iOS, or Android one.

Whether it is a web or a mobile platform, 3,000$ is going for thorough and detailed research on the product development strategy, and 17,000$ is divided to release a lean MVP of a project.

– Why do we not recommend investing the entire budget into the MVP straight ahead?

– Honestly, the answer is straightforward.

Every MVP has a unique turning point when the business product is not entirely ready for a market release, but the budget is running out. 99% of all products currently available on the Internet and that you are continuously using are continually updating and upgrading their software products. They keep pushing and testing innovations that require user reviews.

There are 3 key reasons MVP technology is so strict in both the timeframe line and the budget. First, you can’t infinitely implement lots of features into your digital solution. You need to set the boundaries of your product’s main functionalities, release it to the market and test your idea. That way you’ll know whether your business idea is worth a shot.

Second, while you are putting so much effort into developing your MVP, someone else is already releasing their core product into the market. And that one is either fully or partially replicate the functionalities that your product has. So you must release your product first. The research shows that the first one who releases the first will get the bigger size of a market, rather than a polished product released last in the line.

The third and last one is the process of your product aging. While you are developing an MVP of your product, your digital solution’s technology stack may become an old one, and the specificity of your technology requirement may change already.

– Why do we recommend following our technological development sequence in the right order?

– During every stage of our technological development cycle, a specific knowledge chunk of soon-to-be developed product is produced. Once received, we’ll form it and deliver it to the client. That way, he’ll be aware of what is going on with the product, how the product can be further enhanced and where we should direct the development path. Plus, the development process of building your product will be done correctly.

So the process of our technology development cycle is presented in the following way. Our team will analyze and understand the development strategy on a high level in the Product Development Strategy Session without going too deep into the specifics. In the Design and Discovery phase, we will understand clearly what we want to produce during the MVP session and during the Scaling process (but not too clearly). The MVP will produce a core software product suitable for the market release and further plans for shifting to the Core Product Stage.

– What may happen if someone won’t follow the regular development sequence?

– Well, nothing too critical. You can quickly release the product that is going to be out of the technology development cycle. But there is a 50/50 probability chance of two outcomes. First one – your product will be developed, released out of the cycle, and your target audience will successfully recognize it. Second – the core of your technology implementations is going to be spoiled. Since there are no distinctive requirements nor any synergy with the development flow process thus, during the development time, you’ll form a tangled nonsense clew, which will waste a lot of time on implementing unnecessary features. So don’t build a plane when it is already in the sky. Build it on the ground, test it properly and finally fly on it.

JetRuby Story Log

We want to tell you about the following projects through this session and the Design and Discovery Phase. As a result, they managed to implement strong business models and dynamic products, which they always enhance daily. Here are their brief stories worth mentioning.

Name Coach

The partnership between JetRuby and the “Name Coach” began in 2014. Initially, as a startup owner, the client showed us his product prototype and explained that it would help correct name pronunciation.

The partnership started after a successful Product Development Strategy Session. The client was amazed by delivering his product visualization and the business concept we formed from his inquiry message. Almost immediately, he continued his development process with the Design and Discovery Phase.

As the client knew a good portion of how exactly he could combine the business and the technical part, he lacked a concrete understanding of using the money to achieve a valuable product effectively. For that reason, he wanted to dive deep into the preparation process and understand his uncertainty for his business’s future. If you have stumbled across similar milestones during your business journey, contact us. Our experts will assist you in your first steps and explain the right approach for implementing your product by assembling the right path during the Design and Discovery Phase.

During the Design and Discovery Phase, our team helped our client to fill a Business Model Canvas. Since it was necessary to identify the right business model that his product is going to adopt. Next, we focused on the user story map by identifying various user types and constructing a first UI/UX prototype of the visualized application. As a finishing touch, we drew the app’s beta prototype, which had some of the main screen selections and a core function demo.

During three years of constant development, we worked tightly with the ”NameCoach” web app. Currently, almost every notable US university is actively utilizing this platform. The list includes Stanford, Haverford, Xavier, CMU, and Northwestern schools. The platform has more than 110,000 active users who are feeling much more confident.

StudyClub

Our next partner started his business journey when his first kid was born, and he had immediately solved one of the issues of his state. As his children began to grow up, he noticed that it was real trouble to get your kid occupied with extra activities.

The client came to us with a fundamental concept in his mind on how to solve this business problem. He wanted to develop a scheduling platform for a series of practical children activities in his town.

As he was a technical specialist himself, he was looking for experienced and professional specialists. The ones who could assist him in building a product and guide him to the correct business path. After we introduced him to several successful entrepreneurs and startup projects who have launched successfully during the Design and Discovery phase, he thought no more and agreed to pass it too. So, wait no more! Contact us today and entrust your unique idea to initiate your startup business in just a few months.

After we took him through the Design and Discovery Phase, we suddenly decided to pivot the idea. We analyzed various similar business ideas and tested a new concept with his family friends. A sufficient amount of positive feedback gave him much more confidence in implementing something more than just a simple booking service. And that is the marketplace instead.

As of right now, the platform is still under a huge development process. Even though the platform received a tremendous amount of positive feedback, some moments were waiting for a definite polishing. But with the JetRuby team, our client is striving for the growth of his marketplace!

BWTours

The last project on the list is “BWTours” which came to us quite unexpectedly. The client has contacted from overseas while traveling through South America in search of new life adventures by foot!

She explained her idea in straightforward terms: she wanted to build an E-Commerce website, where she wanted to publish her exciting and unexplored tour road worldwide. Her focus was on the exploration factor, where no other tour guide has put his or her leg before.

During the discussions, our client was worried about the results that she wanted to achieve. Since she will invest her time and effort in developing her product for the first time, for that reason, we assured her that our team has already launched several successful startups during the Design and Discovery phase. So if you have any idea that you genuinely want to implement, wait no more and contact us today for a free Product Development Strategy Session consultation!

Therefore, we took her inquiry and took her along the journey of the Design and Discovery Phase. Our team has produced a set of artifacts (Business Model Canvas, prototype, and product design process of her E-Commerce platform) that helped develop further product launch plans.

After the research, we analyzed the results and compared them with our JetRuby team capabilities. And we have made a decision that was not inferior in performance, stability, and ease of maintenance. Which reduced her initial budget proposal by four times! We concluded our offer with the Tilda page platform that could manage all of her needs.

Final Thoughts

All in all, the code means nothing if you don’t know how your business will function. Prepare your product launch plan steadily, and don’t try to advance your business in only one direction. Since if you do, you’ll be having lots of issues on other business development branches that you preferred to ignore. At JetRuby, we assist in producing software applications. Still, we also make sure it will fit the business model correctly inserted in your marketing and sales processes. This way, we can turn your idea into a working business model. And find the first clients within the first three months. So wait no more and schedule a free Product Development Strategy Session for your business today!