How to Build a Successful Product: A Framework for Entrepreneurs

Starting the business from scratch can seem quite challenging. Considerations if your idea is brilliant enough if your revenue will be just the same as you imagine, if your solution is great enough to be competitive in the industry – we can continue to count hesitations forever. Unfortunately, far not all of these outstanding ideas will be turned into life. The reasons are common such as:

•  low budgeting and resources;
•  no understanding of modern market and products, etc. 

But how would you know if you don’t try? That is why we would like to present a framework for entrepreneurs that are ready to start but are not sure where to. We know how to lead your idea to realization by developing and launching a highly qualified solution. Go on reading to find out what the main steps for building a successful product are.

Steps of building a successful product

We are not saying the transformation of your idea into a real product is an easy and quick process. It requires much effort, time, and investment. If you are ready to dive into the development process, then this guide is just for you. Keep on reading to figure out how to decrease risky situations and successfully release your custom solution.

The uniqueness of your business idea

You may know that any successful product comes from the idea. The question is if this idea is worth considering and putting into practice. First of all, you need to be sure if your product idea is unique and efficient in your business industry. The market of competitors is wide and has to be researched. Usually, the marketing research is held by the hired team of developers. It gives the opportunity to check competitors, reveal what needs the business industry has and how your solution could resolve them. Consequently, the marketing research will help to build accurate project specifications including its objectives, value, and required functionality. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 42% of startup fail because there’s no market need for their services or products

U.S. BLS

If you have a brilliant idea but do not own enough funds to turn it into reality – that is not a big problem. The modern market is full of investors who are ready to provide the required funds in order to get more profit and earnings. Everything depends on the uniqueness of your idea. However, this fact does not mean that your idea should have no competitors on the market. It means that you need to find what features differ your product from others and explain why success is guaranteed according to these differentiators. 

Define your business priorities 

Building a consequent plan of product development is a key to successful launching. Initially, as a client, you need to understand what is the aim of building the solution for your future business and what profit you want to get. Meaning what problems it should resolve, what and how efficiently it will be for developing your business. That is why we recommend the discovery stage for your product that includes a range of features that should be defined on the pre-development stage. Among them are:

• creation project requirements and fixing them in documents;
• identifying the needed technologies and developers;
• estimation within the budget;
• dividing the project into smaller sprints and scheduled tasks;
• wireframing and prototyping.

Find and hire a reliable team of developers with transparent reports

Due to the incredibly vast number of software development companies worldwide, it is important to keep a clear mind and concentrate on their real experience, availability of transparency of all processes, and a full package of documents for reliable partnership. In case you are cooperating with stakeholders, they usually require setting proper deadlines for developing and launching the solution as any delays can cost them much money and effort. You have to be sure that the team goals fully align with your goals and they understand what is important for you and your company.

Build a detailed plan with the project`s requirements

To consider all project peculiarities, we recommend dividing the entire project into smaller parts or sprints with a detailed description of tasks and responsible specialists for their performance. For separating the product, it is obvious to create a list of strong requirements to detail describe each of them. There are different methodologies of software management, for example, our company uses Scrum methodology that is convenient and suitable for the development of all solution types and sizes. It implies regular meetings to check the development progress like:

• planning meetings to define what backlog tasks will be performed in the next sprint;
• grooming meetings that help to review the backlog tasks and decide which ones are at a higher priority to deliver.

Due to Scrum methodology, we divide the entire project into smaller parts, particularly:

Estimate all user stories and tasks including the testing stage

As an entrepreneur, you may not have an endless time and budget even with investors as from the beginning the product seems to be quite questionable. The estimation of all product requirements depends on the chosen pricing model.

Our team usually offers an accurate estimation in the way of evaluating the lowest and the highest case of the product, thus, we get an average final sum that will be needed to build the solution. The estimation also depends if you are going to initially launch MVP or the full-fledged product as each of these decisions takes different amounts of effort, time, and money. Along with developing the core functionality, we strongly recommend paying much attention to the testing phase. It helps to reveal any errors in the product workflow and fix them before the release that lets you save resources. 

Know and meet everyone who is involved in your project

Obviously, you hire a dedicated team of developers and fully entrust them with the development of your custom product. Along with the head of the development team, Scrum Master, we strongly recommend you to meet everyone working on your project. In order to provide a productive partnership, you need to see that they feel and understand you and your business requirements as sometimes there is a probability of cultural and other misunderstandings despite the levels of specialists` experience. It is better to figure it out from the very beginning to avoid critical situations in the further stages of the development. 

Be engaged and monitor the development process

Reliable software development companies tend to keep their clients engaged in the development process. Usually, all communications are held by the Scrum Master who tracks the work of the whole team. However, you should also be involved in the process and monitor any updates to avoid confusion and misunderstandings with the hired team. No developer can be engaged in the development of a custom solution more than a client. Here at Altmaira, we guarantee constant communication with the Scrum Master and members of the team. We know how important it is to keep our clients informed about project updates. There are different types of meetings that are supposed to report the performed tasks by developers as the successful ending of each sprint shows the real result and helps to plan the following steps in product development. 

Think of keeping up with the new technologies

Innovativeness keeps your company in business. You have to be ready to keep up with the new tech trends that are constantly changing and adapt them into your company’s internal systems. It is important not to miss any technological trend that can boost your organization’s productivity and profit. You risk staying out of business if you do not take measures quickly in order to correspond to modern technologies and implement them into your workflows. And here comes one more tip to consider when looking for a development team is to figure out the technology stack they specialize in and check if the company is growing and going to widen their tech stack further. 

Launching the product

As your product is a brand new solution on the market, we would recommend you launch an MVP or minimal viable product with the basic functionality. It helps to test the product and gather first impressions and reviews from users to find out what options are good and what else should be added to product functionality. MVP also decreases risks and the probability of failure. We also suggest building a launch plan for your product that includes all deadlines and tasks that should be done before the release. 

We also suggest you watch the video where you can hear about the most widespread factors that influence startups’ success.

Maintenance

In order to keep up with the development of modern technologies, your released software product requires changes and upgrades due to the latest tech trends. Obviously, you would like to prevent the need to provide product improvements on your own as you may not have enough resources to make these changes properly. Consequently, we’d recommend you to keep a partnership with the maintenance team that is usually the same team that has been developing your solution. Certainly, you do not need a full team of developers, it is mostly several specialists who will monitor the reputation of your solution and take corresponding measures. Here in Altamira, we have three different packages of product maintenance that involve different numbers of specialists, work hours, and prices. We offer you to have a look at our maintenance services in more detail in the presentation below. 

How to choose and hire a reliable team of developers? 

So what are the criteria for choosing a reliable team of developers who has vast experience in building custom solutions for all business industries? There are several well-known platforms where you can find all needed information about software development companies and feedback from their clients like Clutch, Goodfirms, and companies` websites. What to look for? We recommend you to pay attention to the next information:

• how long the company is on the market;
• what industries the company has experience in;
• what is the number of current employees and make sure if it is constant to avoid developer replacement during the development process;
• check the company website including all pages;
• look or ask for the company`s portfolio to see what types of project they have experience in for sure;
• check out the technology stack that the company provides and decide if it suits your project;
• ask for feedback from their clients and the possibility of contacting the clients to find out more about their development flow; 
• look at the documentation package and if they offer regular reports;
• ask if the company offers a maintenance team after the product release as this point is a must to keep pace with modern tech trends.

Generally, there three types of a development team that are available to hire:

FAQ

To end up

Building a custom product can be challenging and demands much effort to lead your solution to a successful release. Our best recommendation is to plan the development process and follow this plan to the launching. As an entrepreneur, you may have some hesitations and lots of questions about where to start. However, you need to remember that one day your idea can become a successful product. Trusting your product to a dedicated team of developers reduces potential risks and leads your company to a prospective future that will correspond to your expectations. Do not waste your time and start turning your idea into reality at once.