Software product development basically implies the deployment of a set of features in a software product tailored to meet certain needs of a market. Software product development is a repetitive logical process that aims to builds a programmed software product to mark a unique personal or business goal, process, or objective. It is mostly a planned strategy that comprises various stages or steps that result in the creation of an operational software product.
Readiness assessment
You may have more questions than answers when planning a new project. It’s fine if you’re only in the dark about technical stuff (e.g., architecture patterns). You can get expert advice on that when you hire a remote software development team and go to the next stage.
What may cause concern is when you have no idea how to achieve product-market fit or if you’re entering an unknown niche with an off-the-cuff strategy. This may be a sign you aren’t ready to get into the software product development process yet.
Here are three things that determine whether you’re ready or not:
- Product specifications . Having a brilliant idea in your head is a good start, but it’s only half-baked without a complete product spec sheet. Take your time to define your requirements, business concept, product functionality, and value. Your specs need to be as specific as possible to give your project a structure without guesswork.
- Domain expertise . Domain expertise is key to achieving product-solution fit, which is why it’s an indispensable element of any project with Relevant. You draw on it to create what your target audience needs, not just another software version of flotsam and jetsam.
- Relevant experience . Knowing the drill of the software product development life cycle for the niche you’ve been into for years speeds up the process. It’s good for you if you’ve already built customer relationships and have some projects running. This can help your product management specialists formulate a rollout plan based on hands-on experience, reducing the odds of backfiring because you haven’t taken everything into account.
Getting to know the team
You can’t fling yourself into the development process single-handedly. Creating a great product from the ground up is about having a close-knit team where everyone knows the ropes.
In most cases, your team will comprise these specialists.
Chief technology officer or tech lead
When getting started, you share your product vision and requirements with a chief technology officer (CTO) or tech lead. But your cooperation with these specialists doesn’t end there. They’ll accompany you throughout all stages of software development.
What they do : A CTO or tech lead manages your project, puts together a roadmap, and helps make a go of your product technically. They oversee how your business strategy is woven into software development processes, identify impediments, and hammer out ways to avoid them. They also act as a communication link between you and other stakeholders to keep decisions aligned.
Delivery manager
A delivery manager is like a supervisory agency behind your project. They ensure you have deliverables on time without overpaying for them throughout the SDLC.
What they do : A delivery manager collaborates with a CTO or tech lead on creating a project roadmap and monitors all software development stages in terms of deadlines and resource allocation. They prioritize your business needs from one step to another and report results as they’re achieved. In the Agile model, a delivery manager steps forward to maximize value in your product through iterations.
Business analyst
You want to have a business analyst (BA) on your team to ensure your product fits into the market as effectively as possible.
What they do : A BA brings unambiguity into where you set your sights on and how your product can achieve that. At the early stages, they crunch numbers and collect insights to analyze what your target audience wants. Then, they hit the sweet spot between problems and solutions, finding the ideal way of creating your product and estimating what it’ll cost you to do that. Finally, they write down business requirements and make sure they are met with nothing left out.
Idea validation and estimation
So you’re sitting on the piles of domain expertise and have connected with a CTO, tech lead, BA, or delivery manager to talk through your project idea. What comes next? Idea validation and project estimation.
Idea validation
Idea validation is a huge step. As part of the product discovery process , it’s all about connecting the dots between what you intend to create and whether anyone will ever want you to use it. That’s when you validate assumptions, hypotheses, and guesses to seek answers for real product demand. Measuring it helps you plan your project budget and deadlines.
Idea validation includes many processes (customer interviews, surveys, etc.) and questions to ask. At this stage, you move from defining woes to figuring out solutions to determining sought-after product features.
Project estimation
Why didn’t we get into software development cost estimation earlier? It’s impossible to do without validating your idea and discovering what your project is about.
Requirements and feasibility analysis
Requirements and feasibility analysis makes detailed estimation and planning complete. It looks at whether the software you want to build is viable for your requirements or calls for changes before design and development are in full swing.
Operational feasibility
You may not yet know if your end product will be easily embraceable, maintainable, and integration-ready. Operational feasibility analysis goes over all that to ensure you have the right strategy to meet your requirements and business needs.
Prototype or MVP
With a prototype or minimum viable product (MVP), you can put your preliminary research into practice and see whether your ideas work in real life. Both options are for testing so that you can adjust your project with agility and use resources sparingly.
A little timesaver : If you’ve validated your ideas and know what your product should look like and how it should work, go to Step 5 . Creating a prototype or MVP is one of those steps in software development you can skip if your plan is on solid ground.
However, if you’re still testing the waters, consider building a clickable prototype, concierge MVP, or full-fledged MVP.
Clickable prototype
Testing the UI of your would-be product? A clickable prototype can be developed for web and mobile applications as a stripped-down design version to evaluate its usability.
This prototype serves as a simple wireframe with basic interactivity to check how user-friendly your layout, buttons, or pages are. It isn’t supposed to help your target audience deal with their woes or get too much into your end product’s functionality.
4 Basic Type of Software Products as per your Business Needs
1. System Software Products
Systems software programs manage the resources of the computer system that help simplify application programming. They include software such as the operating system, database management systems, networking software, translators, and software utilities.
2. Programming Software Products
Programming software also knows as development tools such as compilers, text editors, debuggers, linker are programs or set of programs which help software developers in creating, debugging, and maintaining other programs and apps.
3. Application Software Products :
Application Software is an application or product that can be used to perform tasks. Famous examples of application software are data management software, Office productivity suites, media players, etc.
4. Embedded Software Products :
Embedded System Software products are used to control machines and devices through telecommunications networks, industrial robots, cars, and more.
Why Software Product Development Matters?
As organizations grow, chances are that the same software systems or operations that used to function smoothly, in the beginning, may now be incompatible. So Software product development plays a key role in the success of an organization to keep up with both demand and growth.
Furthermore, software product development is beneficial in the following ways:
1. Optimizes Your Business Processes
Every business has a specific business model and in-house procedures. Altering these processes to suit a specific application or software product is not easy, irrespective of how efficient or powerful it is. Therefore, software product development should align with your model and unique in-house processes and procedures.
2. Offers an Exclusive Solution
It something works for one business, might not work for others. Therefore, developing a customized software product for your organization ensures that it addresses exclusive procedures and activities as per your needs.
3. Offers Competitive Edge
But how? S oftware product development solves many of your business problems and increases efficiency.
So, being the only company in the industry, using a solution like this gives you a definite advantage over the competitors. What happens if your competitors are using the same software product? Well, it allows you to catch up with them and help you plan for technical improvements.
4. A Custom Software Product is Highly Adaptable
The business processes are never stable, they constantly change. So, it becomes essential to adopt new technologies and processes that hold your marketing stronghold. Software product development helps you integrate the new technologies and processes to the existing software allowing you to stay abreast of any shifting in marketing trends.
Steps to Follow for Software Product Development Process plan:
The software product development process is a basic tool for facilitating a large number of people to work together on a collaborative development project. Using one ultimately results in fewer defects, drives shorter delivery times, and better value.
The software product development process consists of the following 7 steps:
1. Ideation and planning
Everything starts with a great idea! But that idea needs to be carefully thought over in order to be executed. Careful planning is the first and foremost step of software product development as it presupposes deciding the scope of the project, explaining means and ways for the new software system to meet business model objectives, cost-related issues, resource availability, and timelines.
2. Requirements and feasibility analysis
During this stage of software product development, the project is defined in a detailed analysis of and how the project’s feasibility is carried out. To build an actionable solution, catchy design, and clean code are not enough, you first need the developers to get an in-depth understanding of the project objective and requirements.
Requirements and feasibility analysis showcase all the technical as well as economical aspects that affect the software development process. It helps identify the risks at the beginning so that risk mitigation strategies can be worked out.
3. Design
Software product design is a prominent aspect of the development process. The actual conceptualizing of the software system is created during the design stage, that is the structured software architecture meeting specific project requirements is created.
A tailored software product design by developers sets definite workflows and standards. The whole software structure is built with the final prototype and mockups used for the next stages of the software product development process. Once the design is identified it’s time to move to the very development.
4. Development & coding
The development stage is all about writing code and turning design documentation into the actual software within the software product development process. This stage development is the longest as it’s the backbone of the whole process. The software developers make sure their code meets the software requirements specifications, conforms to the stakeholders’ requirements, etc.
5. Integration and testing
Now that the software is developed and completed the next step involves integration starts and system testing. The Quality Assurance (OA) team conducts a series of tests including systems integration, functionality testing, and interoperability along with user acceptance testing. This is to make sure the code is clean and the business goals of the solution are met.
6. Implementation and deployment
This is a step that includes the installation of the build software system. It’s a step-by-step procedure based on the implementation plan. The newly built and tested software system is moved to production and transfer for the specific changes to be deployed.
7 . Operations and maintenance
The very last phase of the software product development lifecycle involves regular updates and maintenance of the software product. This step is treated with the utmost attention since during this stage product is polished, enhanced, upgraded, and fine-tuned according to the real-world feedbacks on its performance within this stage.
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