The product phases – an overview

In this post I will take you through a brief overview of the phases a product or feature will have to pass in order to succeed. Although I will use product throughout this article, this can easily be applied to any big piece of functionality.

We will start the journey with the discovery phase which is the product phase in which product managers find a potential solution to what they believe might be a problem within the market. This usually starts with assumptions, coming from one person or a group of persons which will have to be defined and validated. The initial idea will always lack substance and will only focus on a small part of the problem (the tip of the iceberg). In order to transform this into a valid story a product owner has to first fully understand the problem they are trying to solve. So during this phase the most effort should be invested into fully defining the problem, how spread it is within the market and validating it with potential customers. Only after we can define a potential target market, business model, potential solution and initial features. The easiest way to define the solution is to go through a design sprint and we can validate it through customers interviews. This initial feedback will serve as the base of the decision to either go ahead or to pivot.

Although there are advocated of accelerating through this phase in order to decrease time-to-market I highly recommend that we are thorough in order to fully validate our assumptions. If this phase isn’t done properly we will end up with either a sub par product (incomplete) or a product which customers will not buy(doesn’t solve the problem or it does in a very complex way which won’t warrant the purchase). Always remember that in this stage the cost to pivot is relatively low due to the small involvement of the development team.

Once we have the idea defined we can push the product or feature through the next phase – the pre- development. This is where the main activities are focused around writing the epics and stories, giving them a initial priority based on their dependencies, their ROI and if they warrant to be part of the MVP. This is where we also set the cornerstone of our go to market strategy by defining personas, setting up initial commercial strategy, messaging (including preparing the market especially if we want to lunch a new product that disrupts). We can also select core customers that agree to test the product and to provide feedback and which will serve as the product champions and advocates. This is a very collaborative stage in which the product owner’s leadership skills will be tested in order to fully define and validate the stories.

Once everything is in place the product can undergo development. Depending on the methodology of choice – scrum, kanban, waterfall or anything else the feature will take different paths however the outcome has to be the same a stable, usable product. I also encourage all teams that practice a form of agile methodology to release as soon as possible with a minimum set of features in order to validate. Product owners should always remember that it’s OK to make false assumptions if they can learn fast, adjust and pivot.

The next phase is release and this phases goal is to put in front of the market the work accomplished by the teams. This is where the sales strategy is fully tested and adjusted and where customers will adopt or reject the product. Although the heavy lifting will be done by the product marketing team, however the final success rests on the shoulders of all teams involved – product, sales and development. Imagine what would happen if on release the product has a high load time due to a wrongly configured environment – how many customers will brand the product as slow?

Although most people assume that the release phase is the last phase, in reality there are two more phases. The next one is monitoring and improvement and this is where potential defects are fixed and new features are added. This also where the sales and marketing strategy are adjusted because the product becomes mature. This is where the majority of the revenue and market share is gained and this phase reaches when the product plateaus from a commercial standpoint. Throughout this phase the product is measured based on its KPIs and adjustments are made in order to reach its goals.

The last product phase is decommissioning and replacement and occurs some time after the product reaches full maturity however this is not a mandatory phase. If we decide that a product costs the company more than it produces (from all standpoints not just cashflow) its important to plan with the utmost of care because there are circumstances in which a product might reach cult status or it might be part of ongoing contracts. If any of these is the case than discontinuing the product might have a massive impact on the company.

In the end its important to note that we always need to validate all assumptions, that it’s OK to make false assumptions as long as we learn from them and pivot as soon as possible and that releasing fast and putting the feature in front of customers will provide more feedback than any form of interview or test.

This post has been published on www.productschool.com communities.

By : Cosmin Elefterescu