How do you create the best product development lifecycle?

In my experience as a product owner, understanding the problem from a customer-centric perspective is paramount. For example, during a recent project, we conducted in-depth market research to validate the problem's existence and prioritize features accordingly. But it's also crucial to align these features with our business goals, ensuring that they contribute meaningfully to our strategy. An example of this was when we had to prioritize certain functionalities based on their potential impact on revenue generation. However, continuous feedback loops with customers and the development team were instrumental in refining our solution. This iterative process, is essential for delivering a product that truly meets customer needs.

We have done a lot of research in this area. Two of the top reasons cited for product failures: 1. it failed to solve a problem that was important to the customer/market. 2. it failed to solve the problem better than something that was already available (it was a 'me too' solution). This is why the Stage-Gate(R) Model for new product development is so widely implemented. The first two stages (before the development stage begins) are devoted to: - understanding market needs/wants/desires - assessing/experimenting multiple solution options for the best product/market fit - assessing/experimenting business models for value creation for customers, value chain, & the company - assessing best launch strategy: minimum viable or minimum marketable

Not all 'models' are equal. A scientific model is a conceptual, operational or mathematical representation of a system. It should be: - based on reliable observations (peer reviewed) - able to explain the characteristics used to formulate it - predictive - able to explain the phenomena that were not used to develop the model - able to be refined when new, credible, conflicting observations arise. One of the world's most rigorously tested/refined new product development 'models', is Stage-Gate(R) and its algorithm (a proven recipe for success). The Stage-Gate Model is unique for many reasons, but mostly for its built-in funding/investment decision gates (between stages) used to engage leaders and ensure worthy projects are properly funded.

George Box: all models are wrong. Some are even useful...taught Senior level DoE course where to goal was use the Data to create a robust, predictive model with acceptable error bars.

Concurrent with developing a roadmap and creating the product backlog, I have found it helpful to put a high-fidelity prototype in front of potential users to validate the designs. With that additional level of confidence we can go into sprints knowing that we are building a product that will resonate with users because it is informed by user research and user validation of the designs.

I find that the term 'roadmap' is used in a variety of different ways by different experts, professors, innovators and developers, so I stay away from using it to define anything. Our research confirms that successful developers make hundreds if not thousands of trade-off decisions throughout the course of developing the product: defining, experimenting, testing, and adapting the product to achieve the optimal product-market fit. This is iterative and can appear very chaotic. Therefore, the developer/team must have a north star or vision to guide this effort in a logical manner, including a way to prioritize and sequence your backlog.

Going into sprints, product managers must always ensure that all "ducks are in a row". Development time is expensive, and ensuring that all activities leading up to development are completed and validated (e.g., market research, user research, usability review, dependencies, and business alignment) minimizes wasted development time.

Building on Letty's excellent comment.. The most effective way to sprint through development is to ensure a high-quality front end (stages 1 and 2) are completed first, providing the 'target' the developers should aim for, the insights necessary to work with, and the parameters necessary to work within to ensure value creation for the customer/market and the firm.

Evaluating results and feedback should not be completed in 'the final step'. Companies that use Stage-Gate(R) are collecting feedback and test results in every stage. Every stage is testing for three key pieces of insights: - Is it REAL? Is there really a customer or a larger market that will buy this? - Can we WIN? Is the technical solution(s) we are developing better than all other competitive alternatives? - Is it WORTH It? Can we make money? profitably? Early-stage experiments and testing designs are less expensive than the Development stage and all latter stages. This is by design. You want a healthy attrition curve - you want to discover failures as early as possible, before you allocate expensive resources to develop & launch.