It’s all about the product! But how do we get there?

Delivering a great product should be the first focus of any IT Company. It is the solution to the problem that first got us started in here after all. The users of that product will then be the people that used to have that problem (even if they didn’t know it). But they don’t anymore, because they use our product, got it? People with fewer problems are happier people, and happier the world is. We made a happier world, isn’t that a noble thing? Prestige and recognition await us. And money, and love from some extremely attractive individuals from the respective gender of preference. Ok, I might be escalating too quickly.

So, great products, that’s the main goal. How do we achieve them? There are multiple ways, like in everything, there’s not only one correct formula. Whatever works. Yes, some ways are smarter than others and there are best practices and frameworks that seem to provide a good optimised basis. But still, product development cycles vary company by company, and even team by team. Even so, a general pattern can be found: Research and Plan, Design, Implement and Test, and (3…2…1…) Release!
Let’s go short over them:

Research and Plan

Time to think about what to build. Ideas might come from all kinds of sources. The chosen one will probably be a big mash-up of all those ideas from all those sources. The more seems to be the better — overload should be controlled, however.
At some point, we’ll need to narrow it down. We’ll need to prioritise based on whichever factors we have on and define success so we can later measure it. And hey, we are already planning.

Design

In this stage, we define features and functionality. No, it’s not just drawing out what the product will look like. Generally, it means loads of tough dedicated work. The process can be longer or shorter though, according to how strict the resultant specifications need to be.

Implement and Test

This is when the engineering stars come in. They turn ideas into code and stuff gets done. Yet, no matter what, the plan will eventually fail. Unforeseen issues will appear and adjustments will have to be made on the prior stages.
If it doesn’t, just wait until you run some tests and issues will for sure come out of the dig. That’s the kind of trouble we should search for. It will drop out one way or the other, and the later the worse.

Release

Here, we already have our beloved baby. The launch needs to run smoothly and the user support needs to be ready.
And now, is it over? Ah, never! Let’s measure what could be done better and iterate all over again.

These four stages of the product development cycle often overlap and feedback into each other, as they should.