Product development method is a set of rules which helps companies to plan and organize their development process. Company’s success depends on the product they are making. The bigger your company, the more important is the quality of the product you are putting into market. Product development is crucial in creating a successful product that meets customer requirements, stays ahead of competition and brings revenue.

Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC) –  is an approach used for developing new products by many different types of organizations, including corporations, government agencies, research laboratories, and universities. This framework provides guidance during each stage of planning for a new product or service development project. 

It divides all activities needed to develop a given product into four phases:

–       Idea Generation – where ideas for potential products are investigated, created and assessed

–       Screening – where ideas that seem most promising are further developed and evaluated

–       Development – During the development phase, a dedicated development team collaboratively designs, produces, tests, and refines the product according to its specifications. This process also involves pilot testing of the actual product or service to ensure it meets basic requirements.

–   Commercialization – when the product or service is introduced to the marketing services for consumer purchase.

Product Life Cycle

Agile Product development process can be a complex process with many stages involved in getting a new idea from concept to launch as a commercial success. Many organizations have standard stages they follow for all projects . However , there are always developments within each stage that may require changes to the plan during product development.

Introduction

–   Business Analysis – The business analysis phase is the first stage typically involved in product development . It involves determining who will buy the product or service, what they will use it for , and how much they are willing to pay for it .  This includes developing audience profiles, market research , and competitor profiles .

Product Feasibility Phase

–   Product Design – After the introduction of the product idea, designers work on two versions of a design: master specification document that details every aspect of the future product’s features and functionality; prototype that demonstrates that concept. This phase may include facilities such as rapid prototyping , computer aided design ( CAD ), finite element analysis ( FEA ), computational fluid dynamics ( CFD ), and computer aided manufacturing ( CNC ).

–   Product Safety & Regulations – Engineers must ensure their products are safe. This can be difficult to accomplish if the product incorporates text survey software or complex integrated circuits . To reduce the risk of injury, malfunction, or damage to other products , engineers will test it under various conditions and identify any problems . If necessary, they may revise the design based on in-app feedback from the testing phase.

– Product Launch Phase – this is when your dream takes off! You’ve got your first customers. What now? How do you keep them happy? What’s next? When we launched Chisel, it was sort of confusing time for us.

–   Production Ramp-up – Once production begins , manufacturers must determine how many units they can produce per hour/day/month, determine the cost of production, and identify any quality issues.

–   Distribution Ramp -up – Manufacturers (and distributors) must set up their distribution network to facilitate getting units into customers’ hands.

Post Launch Phase 

After a product has been on the market for several months, companies often release updates , new versions , or entirely new products . Initially, these may be limited to addressing customer complaints or adding minor features that improve usability . As manufacturers gain more information from analysis of usage data reporting and feedback from users , the frequency and scale of these updates may increase.In highly competitive marketing services, it is not uncommon for rapid development cycles to result in entirely new products with little overlap between demand generations. This disrupts current revenue streams as users switch equipment in favor of the new model. Existing products in mature or saturated marketing services may be discontinued altogether once development resources have been exhausted . The nuanced approach of the generation company involves navigating the delicate balance between fostering innovation and managing existing product portfolios in the ever-evolving marketing services landscape.

The product development process is fairly well understood in engineering and information technology (IT). However, given the increasing interaction of IT with people, other disciplines, processes and technologies; it’s becoming more difficult to define. A working definition is offered by Gumus (2009) who states that the ‘product development process is a set of steps starting from identifying requirements/customer needs, to designing the solution (raw materials, hardware, software), producing it (manufacturing), delivering it/marketing it, servicing it and iterating on all activities until the up coming demand generation.’ It also includes managing associated risks. Separate from this concept is product management which can be considered as the process of defining what is to exist, while product development can be considered as the process of bringing it into existence.

Mennicken (2011) states that the product development process includes new product concept creation and refinement, design for manufacture/assembly (DFMA), global engineering, sourcing and procurement, software development, documentation creation and control. Each of these disciplines has vast information associated with it on how to achieve success in each discipline which are usually only discovered through trial-and-error or by following best practices or experts’ advice. However, all this information needs to be coordinated into one cohesive plan encompassing all disciplines within the whole system -the product development process.

Thus Product development methods in a digital product management are essential for telecommunication equipment. Product life cycle also plays an important role for telecommunication devices. Also all steps can be correlated with Agile methodology.

The product development process is a sequence of phases in which the output of one phase becomes input to the next. This applies not only to hardware development but also software development, documentation creation and control. Each of these disciplines has vast information associated with it on how to achieve success in each discipline which are usually only discovered through trial-and-error or by following best practices or experts’ advice.

However, all this information needs to be coordinated into one cohesive plan encompassing all disciplines within the whole system -the product development process. Thus Product development method is essential for telecommunication equipment .