Working with Teams to Develop New Products

Getting a team to develop new products can be tough. Team members can be diverse in terms of their roles, skills, social background or deeply-entrenched cultural or organizational differences. However, collaboration between team members can highly affect the outcome or results of a project.

Obstacles aside, once a team is finalized an entrepreneur or team leader can look forward to product development. Product development often requires a lot of brainstorming and you are likely to work toward devising a strategy and making your product unique in the first phase. This brings us to the essentials you are likely to need to create a successful product.

1. Developing a Strategy

If you sail without a map or compass you are likely to get lost fast. The same is the case with product development. In simple words, a strategy is necessary to achieve your targets and goals. An effective strategy includes setting business priorities, planning growth and deciding the roadmap for your product. A strategy will outline what’s important for your business and what you must do to achieve it.

In order to devise a successful strategy you must first gather the relevant facts about the industry you are working in. You need to identify your target market and the strengths and weaknesses of your product. A good plan will also include the threats that you will face in the future and ways to tackle them.

Add continuous value to your product and identify the potential of increasing competition or countering market saturation. Developing an effective strategy is what most decision makers must do before actually moving forward with product development.

2. Creating a Roadmap

Once a viable strategy is implemented, you have to come up with a roadmap to work toward your goals. This detailed roadmap can span weeks, months, or even years, depending on the decision maker and will help you move forward.

Make sure your roadmap is compelling and visually clear. Communicate the tasks and goals to your team members so that they are likely to achieve them in a given time period. This also includes identifying conflicting roles and resolving issues in a timely manner. A clear roadmap should also be accompanied by strategic justification so members are aware of what they are working toward.

3. Guiding Clients through Requirements and User Experience

Leading and convincing your clients can be difficult, especially if you are working on a new product. You might already be facing competition from existing brands that can reduce the possibility of your future business growth, but with proper analysis of your client requirements, you are likely to secure a substantial market share.

Proper marketing can let your potential clients know why they should choose your product and how it is different from other brands working in the same industry. Refer back to your roadmap in order to deliver a good marketing strategy. Every user experience counts. Influencing a client with a better user experience can facilitate your future business dealings and will attract more customers in the long run.

4. Testing and Focus Group

For any business, testing and quality assurance of a product pave the way for future business growth. Imagine delivering your new product without proper testing and getting negative feedback from your clients. The harm it will bring to your business can be long lasting and might turn away your potential customers. This can also lead to heavy spending on reactionary marketing activities for your business.

Proper testing of your new product ensures that it is in line with the requirements of your customers and will save you a considerable amount of money, time and effort from making changes  in the future.

In contrast, focus groups are a part of market research and they pay attention to the user reactions to new products and services. This type of research is usually accompanied by questions for the target audience.

A perfect focus group research involves selecting members that are likely to have an interest in the underlying business product. For new products, it can also be effective as it provides understanding to team members on how to improve and add value to their goods or services.

5. Check in Early and Often To Ensure There Are No Misunderstandings

As a team leader, you might already have a strategy, a clear roadmap and may also have done testing and research on your product. Now comes the most important task, which includes regular follow-ups with your team members. Know that you only have one team that is likely to be diverse. There might be misunderstandings that can delay your product development.

To make sure your team members are all on the same page, you need to have regular feedback sessions. This includes interacting with team members and providing them with a solution when they seem to be stuck.

A good leader is one who can resolve the problems in a smooth and timely manner. Anyone can be a decision maker with regards to new product development but putting things in perspective is what counts as a good quality leader. Since you are developing a new product it is likely that your team members might be de-motivated with regards to the possibility of the product’s feasibility, but you need to stand by them and address their misconceptions.

6. Smooth Production Deployment

As a team leader, you have mostly done your tasks to work with teams in order to develop new products but you still need to make sure that your strategic plans and roadmaps are working toward smooth product deployment. Deployment of a new product can be critical and there is a major risk of failure.  You are not willing to take such risks.

In order to ease production deployment, make sure that your product is installed in batches. Of course, you are not going to start from scratch if your new product fails in its first run. Deploying in small batches ensures that the team is moving forward slowly but gradually toward the completion of your product. You can also try automating your deployment process as much as possible to reduce the risk of human errors.

Final Thoughts

Working with teams to develop a new product might be difficult in the initial stage but with a proper strategy, testing and smooth deployment you can achieve many favorable outcomes, leading to a great and long lasting startup.

As a bonus tip, make sure you always have a plan B in your strategy to look forward to in case things do not work out as expected according to your plan A. Additionally, effective marketing and using digital advertising can ensure you are heard by your target audience on the internet.

 

Vimware provides IT strategy and software development services in the Greater Los Angeles Area. We specialize in helping organizations transition and reinvent themselves into the tech world. Our clients are across many industries including academia, consumer goods, entertainment, and healthcare. Expertise covers iOS, Android, Windows, LAMP and MEAN technology stacks. Vimware is a Select Partner within Amazon’s AWS partner network.