Engineering
Playbook: How to optimise your product development budget with early validation
Sep 12, 2024
Is this a problem your team encounters?
In product development, there's no room for wasted effort. It’s frustrating to see your team pour time and resources into features that fall flat, failing to resonate with users or meet stakeholder needs. This disconnect not only squanders valuable resources but also undermines the potential impact of your product.
Misalignment often arises from a lack of rigorous early validation. When teams rush into development without adequate prototyping and user testing, they risk creating solutions that miss the mark entirely. To dominate the market, you must embed validation practices early in your process, ensuring every feature you build is strategically aligned with real user demands.
Your goals are our goals
Achieving alignment between development efforts and genuine user needs is essential for success. Our extensive experience with clients in similar situations reveals that early validation through prototyping and user testing is non-negotiable for effective development.
Key benefits of solving this:
- Eliminate the risk of building unwanted or unnecessary features.
- Maximise efficiency in resource and budget allocation.
- Enhance alignment with user needs and stakeholder expectations.
Key approaches to tackle this challenge
Best Practice #1: Use rapid prototyping tools (e.g., Figma, InVision) to validate ideas
Utilise rapid prototyping tools such as Figma and InVision to swiftly create visual or interactive models of your product concepts. These prototypes enable your team to test ideas and gather critical feedback before committing to full-scale development. This strategic approach minimises the risk of investing in features that lack market relevance, ensuring your focus remains on high-impact functionalities.
Prototyping is not just a step in the process; it's a game-changer that delivers invaluable insights into user preferences. By refining ideas based on real feedback, you empower your team to deliver products that resonate and drive results.
Best Practice #2: Test new concepts with users before committing to full development
Testing concepts with actual users is an imperative step before launching into full-scale development. Conduct user testing on prototypes or early iterations to gather essential feedback and validate whether the concepts meet user expectations. This proactive approach identifies potential issues early and refines features based on genuine user input.
By committing your development efforts only to validated features, you eliminate wasted time and resources. This method accelerates development cycles and ensures that your team is dedicated to creating features that deliver exceptional value.
What does success look like?
Success means eliminating wasted development efforts through a disciplined approach to validating ideas before full-scale development. By leveraging rapid prototyping tools and conducting thorough user testing, your team prioritises features that deliver significant impact while aligning the development process with user needs and stakeholder expectations, driving efficient resource use and enhancing your product’s relevance.
