From Sketch to Scale - Key Stages of Product Development

Building a product from an initial idea to a full-scale, market-ready solution requires careful planning, validation, and iteration.

Who doesn’t like the divine art of building? The God-like process of turning caffeine and chaos into a product. This works well for short-term less resource-hungry projects.

For longer term projects, we need to ensure that the product development process is both efficient and effective. It is essential to ensure that we are building the right product for the right audience.

So here I propose, very widely accepted and proven process to build a product from an initial idea to a full-scale, market-ready solution. Understanding these key stages of product development can help us make informed decisions about when and how to build our products.

Each stage minimizes risk, validates assumptions, and creates a product that truly resonates with users. If the product doesn’t perform well at any stage, it signals a need to revisit the drawing board and potentially pivot.

To paint a picture of the process, let’s walk through a hypothetical example of a peer-to-peer rental marketplace that allows people to rent everyday items with one another.

1. Proof of Concept (PoC) - Feasibilily Validation

Purpose: Test whether an idea is technically possible before investing further resources Focus: Ensure technical feasibility, validating core assumptions Audience: Internal team, engineers, stakeholders.

From the lens of technical feasibility, creating a rough marketplace application at this stage won’t be a huge undertaking. There are many no-code platforms available to serve this purpose.

What is more crucial is validating our core assumptions:

• People can be convinced to rent out (and rent in) their extra household items to (and from) strangers.
• An online marketplace would be the best platform for this purpose.

To validate these assummptions, we have several options:

1. Conduct small surveys and interviews with potential users to access demand.
2. Manually match a few renters and owners to test if people are willing to share items.

During the survey find out what kind of items people are willing to rent out and what kind of items are people willing to rent in. when and other questions. This stage also helps us chalk out the ideal customer profile and the category of items most suitable for renting, which will inform our marketing and distribution strategy.

If there is interest and people are willing to pay, the concept is validated, and we can proceed to the next stages.

2. Prototype - Concept Visualization

Purpose: Create a rough model (visual or interactive) to gather early feedback from teams and stakeholders Focus: Demonstrating basic design and functionality without full development. Audience: Internal team, investors, early adopters.

At this stage, we want to create a basic model to showcase how the rental marketplace would work. We can create a clickable mockup using tools like Figma that demonstrates basic user journeys such as:

• Listing an item
• Searching
• Booking

Gather feedback from the internal team and potential users, then iterate on the model based on their needs. The focus here is to ensure clarity regarding what we plan to build based on user experience.

3. MVE (Minimum Viable Experiment) - Market Testing Before MVP

Purpose: Validate market demand before committing to development Focus: Quick, small-scale experiments to test assumptions Audience: Potential customers

We can launch a basic landing page explaining the concept, with a call to action to “Join Waitlist” or “Get in Touch”.

Promote the landing page link through channels where most of the potential users are likely to be found. For e.g. we can target facebook marketplace, put up QR codes around our locality, etc.

Track how many people sign up or express interest in using the platform. If there is enough traction, it’s worth moving to the next stage - the MVP.

4. MVP (Minimum Viable Product) - Functional Core Product

Purpose: Launch a working version with only essential features to test market response. Focus: Functionality over perfection, solving the core problem. Audience: Early adopters, beta users.

By the completion of this stage, we should have a working version of the product. Depending on our ICP, we can decide whether we want to create a webapp, a mobile app, or both.

Our app should include options for searching, listing, booking, payment, tracking, rating, etc.

Launch the app. Actively listen to user feedback—what they like and what they do not. Reach out to those who showed interest by signing up on the waitlist and invite them to join the beta testing phase.

5. MLP (Minimum Lovable Product) - Early Product with Delight

Purpose: Go beyond an MVP by making it engaging and enjoyable, increasing user retention. Focus: Adding elements that make users love the product, not just use it. Audience: Broader early adopters and product enthusiasts.

Create a product that is more engaging and delightful. Partner with local influencers to boost adoption. More users means more feedback. The willingness to pay for the product is a strong positive indicator. Gather real-world feedback and refine the product accordingly.

For example, we can add features like:

1. Support for videos and audio.
2. Support for multiple languages.
3. Reviews and verification to build trust.
4. More intuitive and visually appealing interface.
5. Support for multiple payment methods.
6. Support for pickup and drop.

6. MMP (Minimum Marketable Product) - Ready for Wider Market

Purpose: Ensure the product is refined enough for a wider release and monetization. Focus: Stability, scalability, and readiness for broader adoption. Audience: Larger customer base, general users.

By the end of the previous stages we should have a product ready for widespread adoption. Optimise the platform for scalability and broader reach while expanding beyond early adopters to mainstream users through targeted marketing campaign for growth.

Be prepared to revisit previous stages if something isn’t working out as planned.

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Conclusion

After completing these stages, we can focus on expanding market reach for mass-market appeal and potentially serving enterprise clients—depending on our company’s vision and appetite for growth in that territory.

FIN!