As with everything in life you need to have a step by step procedure in order to get good results.
Similar case is with developing products, lets start with the phases.
Four phases of product lifecycle.
1. Introduction
2. Growth
3. Maturity
4. Decline
Introduction
Whenever a company or an individual launches a fairly new product in the market then its always hard to find interested consumers so in the beginning very few people show up to give your product a try. So, the very first thing to take under consideration is to develop a product good enough so it sparks an interest in the early users because if the product is not good enough instead of getting recommendations you will get negative publicity and your product will die before it could ever spread its wings.
Growth
Let’s say your product lived to see another day and now your sales are rising and more and more people started using it and the sales are rising. Now what you need to do is start improving your product by adding new features, improving the user experience gather up as much reviews from the users as possible and make your product better but this also comes up with a catch not only users but potential competitors also start entering the market.
If all of the above boxes are checked then congratulations you have just entered the growth phase of your product.
Maturity
Are your sales peaking? Have you started seeing the clones of your product to increase everyday? Then you have just entered your maturity phase.
Here not only do you have to work day and night to compete with your competitors but also work on how to stay relevant. You can’t make any mistakes now because at the maturity phase the true founding fathers struggle to keep up with the competition. So, you need to be at the top of your game to stay at the top for as long as possible.
Decline
Now you have given your best at everything but still the product is declining, sales are not coming in, you are running out of ideas, this phase is known as the decline phase where the market has gotten so saturated that its hard to keep the product relevant and in some cases people phase out due to competitor pressure. Over here what can be done is to try to stay relevant for as long as possible without facing more than bearable loss.
Product Development Phases
I feel like now you have a basic idea of how a product lives through its life so now is the time to find out about the basics of good product development
1. Conceive
2. Plan
3. Develop
4. Iterate
5. Launch
6. Steady State
7. Maintain or Kill
Conceive
So, you want to build a new product what is going to be the first step? Your curiosity to build a product rose because you have faced a problem and this curiosity is the basis of every innovation around us you should be proud of yourself!
The first step is to find out about what is the problem that the users are facing, collect data, collect experiences and then try to come up with solutions and work your way through it and come up with a plan.
Plan
You can start off by doing the market research.
Does a solution to this problem already exists? In no? great if yes? Then what does it do and what can you do to make it better. Conduct customer reviews to find if people find this as a problem or are you the only one facing it? Also try to find out will the solution help you generate revenue?
After finding out that this is a problem worth spending your resources on, then roadmap what can be made, how long will it take? and at what point we would need to add features if we are going to continue building it?
Develop
In the development phase what you need to do is come up with timelines, write out features for the product, develop your specs based on user stories.
After doing all that you should get in touch with your developers and designers and ask them how long will it take? Are our requirements feasible? Do we need to add or remove somet hings. Do everything you can to come out with a list of requests and don’t change them until you get to the early stages of product development which is knows as a MVP
Iterate
Ok so, now you are one step closer to your destination where you have just finished up an early prototype also known as an Early Minimum MVP. Now what you need to do is get early feedback from users, test the assumptions that you have made and alpha beta test them. Don’t be afraid to fail you can still make some changes and continue refining your product.
Launch
Congratulations! The hard work paid off. You have just entered into your launch phase.
Now to successfully launch those long work hours that you put in you need to be very strategic. You should get in touch with your marketing team, legal team, PR team and sales team to position this product for a public launch. Right after launch you should send it out and wait for the public reaction and write down your next steps accordingly.
Steady State
I hope you have started getting feedback from users by now what you can do now is collect metrics on how people are using it.
Are they enjoying it? are they willing to pay? Then analyse your product and optimise your metrics accordingly in order to generate more return on investment (ROI). Ask your marketing team to continue to market it and sales people to sell it. In short try to find out is the struggle good enough to continue?
Maintain or Kill
It was a wild ride till now but we need to reap the rewards instead of the loss. Now is the time to collect data on the purchases are they frequent enough? Are we still at the top or at least top three? Are we still competitive with the market? How much money is being spent to maintain it? Has it started paying out for itself? How is the ROI?
If all of the answers are yes? Great! Continue your journey if not then maybe its time to pack up and move to something else. It maybe not be about the revenue anymore, your company vision might have changed or the executives now feel like we need a different direction so, sadly and unfortunately we will have to let it go.
Conclusion
There is no set way to come up with a good product but you can be as organised as possible just have a positive mindset, get to know the problems, explore its solutions work hard and it will all come to existence.
Good Luck.