Product discovery is a process born out of the Agile methodology that has revolutionized the way of thinking about product development. What does it include, and how can your team benefit from it?
Regardless of which kind of product you are developing – a digital or a physical one – you need to organize the development process in order to achieve expected outcomes. Knowing the role of each phase in the product’s lifecycle can help you improve its reception and reduce business risks, regardless of which methodology you manage your projects with.
Without product discovery, it’s basically impossible to create a product that will maintain and continue attracting users in the long term. What is this phase really and what does it determine?
What is product discovery process?
Product discovery is a first step towards the MVP (minimum viable product). The product development process consists of three phases – discovery, delivery, and market adoption. The product reception may be determined by many factors. However, the success of your app depends mainly on the first phase.
The product discovery process aims at figuring out what your customers really want and how to deliver it to them. At this stage, the product teams define the goals to fulfill with the introduction of the product to the market and make sure whether you’re doing the right thing. After it’s finished, you should have answers to these questions:
- What are the goals of this project?
- Who is this product for, and what problems does it solve?
- What are the expectations of my users?
- How does my product fulfill the market demand?
- What is the Unique Value Proposition of my product?
- What functionalities should I include to meet the user’s expectations and achieve my goals?
Knowing them, the team can head on to the next stage – product delivery. Then, it’s time for the design and development team to figure out how to make this all happen and end up with a seamless, beautiful product.
Why is worth running a product discovery workshop?
It’s relatively common for companies to develop an app-only because it’s trendy. Plus, there is a general rush towards digital product development as if the company that doesn’t have one would have no chances of surviving on the market.
Don’t get us wrong – we don’t mind brands introducing their own apps. But the focus is on outrunning the competitors with the coolest features, the end of the app’s lifecycle may be closer than expected.
During the discovery process, your product managers and the product team can take the time to figure out what shape should the product really have, using customer feedback and user research. It’s a perfect time to refine the product strategy, hear out the key stakeholders, test and reject different solutions and ideas. If it happens on further stages, the business risk is much higher.
If you have such an opportunity, take advantage of your custom software provider’s experience and order a product workshop. Aside from front end and back-end development, they can provide you with the product development insight.
