How U+ helps organizations create products the market loves

In today's fast-paced and ever-changing business landscape, organizations need to be agile and innovative to stay ahead of the competition and ensure long-term survival. However, building a successful new business from scratch requires a lot of time, resources, and expertise. Indeed, over 90% of innovation projects end in failure.

Even the most powerful organizations can see their corporate initiatives fail when the market rejects them. This was the case with Google+, the search giant’s short-lived social networking platform. Launched in 2011, Google+ was positioned as a competitor to Facebook and aimed to provide a comprehensive social networking experience. However, despite Google's extensive resources and efforts to promote the platform, it failed to gain significant user adoption and struggled to compete with Facebook's dominance in the social media space.

Indeed, many of the world’s most valuable companies have similarly expensive failures in their portfolio. Microsoft invested hundreds of millions in developing the Kin, a social-media focused phone aimed at teenagers. However, the product’s target market ultimately rejected it for its high price and limited features. Similarly, Amazon – despite its reputation as a leading creator of successful innovations – has an eye watering number of business flops in its back catalog, from online fashion retailer Endless to its brief foray into the restaurant industry.

The U+ method is a powerful, efficient, and resilient approach to product development that can dramatically increase your chances of innovation success. In this article, we will guide you through the key stages of our product-building process, which can be broken down into three steps: pre-development, development, and commercialization and go-to-market activities.

The pre-development phase

Before tackling the actual build-out, the U+ team focuses on several key activities to ensure that clients have everything they need to build a product that wows their target market. Activities during this phase include:

• Technical specification writing / backlog refinement: During this stage, we work with clients to define the technical specifications for their product. This includes creating a detailed backlog that outlines all of the product’s proposed features and functionalities.

• Technical team setup: We assemble a technical team with the right skills for the new business. This team may include developers, designers, commercialization experts, and other technical professionals with startup experience.

• Definition of the MVP product: We rigorously define a minimum viable product (MVP) for the new business. An MVP is a bare bones product with only core functionality intact. By releasing such a product to market first, builders can focus their efforts on the most important features, thereby reducing development costs and speeding up time to full launch.

• Refinement sessions with the client to ensure compatibility with internal systems: During this stage, U+ works with clients to ensure that their product is compatible with their existing internal systems. This includes refining the technical specifications and backlog to ensure that the product integrates seamlessly with the client's existing infrastructure.

• Development roadmap planning: We consult with clients to create a detailed roadmap for product development. This includes outlining the steps that need to be taken to build the product, as well as the timelines and milestones that need to be achieved.

• UI/UX work for the target group and market: We create a user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) that is tailored to the client’s target market. This includes conducting user research to understand the needs and preferences of the target audience, and creating a design that meets those needs.

• Cloud infrastructure and DevOps setup: We establish the cloud infrastructure and DevOps tools needed to build and deploy the product. This includes selecting the appropriate cloud provider, configuring the infrastructure, and setting up the necessary DevOps tools.

The outputs of this phase include a detailed minimum viable product development roadmap, as well as related architecture, specification and scoping. Additionally, we present the client with UI designs for the target market, a development environment setup, and a UAT/staging environment setup.

The development phase

The development process is the most critical phase in product building. This is where the product begins to take shape, and the team works to bring the client’s original vision to life. At U+, the development process is streamlined to ensure that each step is completed efficiently and with precision. The activities that take place during development are as follows:

• Environment set up: We set up the development environment, tools, and infrastructure needed for the team to begin work.

• Product roadmap development: Once the environment is set up, the next step is to create a product roadmap. This is an essential step that outlines the milestones and objectives that the team will work towards during the development process.

• Backlog prioritization: The development team will then prioritize the backlog of tasks. This will help the team to focus on the most important tasks first and ensure that the development process is progressing smoothly.

• UX / UI design: During this stage, the design team will create the best user interface and user experience design for the product. This is an iterative process that requires testing and feedback from users.

• Sprint process definition: Sprint process definition involves breaking down the development process into smaller sprints. This helps the team to work more efficiently and to make progress towards the product milestones.

• Ongoing Agile development: Agile development is a methodology that emphasizes collaboration, flexibility, and rapid iteration. At U+, the development team follows an agile development process to ensure that the product is built efficiently and effectively.

• Ongoing demo and feedback workshops: Throughout the development process, the team will hold regular demo and feedback workshops. This is an opportunity to showcase the progress made and to gather feedback from stakeholders.

• Take to market planning: Once the product is nearing completion, the team will begin to plan the launch. This involves developing a comprehensive strategy for taking the product to market.

• TTM partner identification: To ensure a successful product launch, it is important to identify potential partners who can help to promote the product. The team will work to identify and build relationships with these partners.

• Brand development: Finally, the team will work on developing the brand for the product. This includes creating a brand identity, messaging, and other elements that will help to establish the product in the market.

Throughout the development process, we deliver the product incrementally and in successive stages. This ensures that the product is finalized on time and within budget, and also provides the client with full visibility at every stage. Moreover, we establish a backlog of tasks for ongoing development, ensuring that the product continues to evolve and improve after the initial launch.

A key output for the development phase is the formulation of a take to market plan, which outlines the strategy needed for launching the product. This includes identifying target markets, developing marketing materials, and other key elements of the launch strategy. In addition, we design take to market campaigns to generate interest and excitement around the product. These campaigns can take many forms, including email campaigns, social media advertising, and other marketing efforts.

Finally, we work to identify and establish partnerships with key stakeholders, including potential customers, investors, and other partners who can help to promote the product.

The commercialization phase

The final phase is focused on commercialization and go-to-market activities. This phase is crucial for ensuring the success of the MVP product and ultimately the success of the client's new business. The following are some of the key activities involved in this phase:

• Customer feedback collection and UX iteration: We analyze customer behavior and gather insights through ongoing interviews, surveys, and feedback collection, and use these insights to continuously improve the user experience.

• Continuous acquisition campaign and funnel optimization: We assist clients in running and optimizing acquisition campaigns to attract new users, and also helps them optimize the pipeline and conversion funnels to increase retention and revenue.

• Branding, messaging, and positioning iteration: We refine the new product’s brand identity, messaging, and positioning based on market feedback.

• Customer onboarding and support framework refinement: We help to optimize the customer onboarding process and improve the support framework, thereby enhancing the customer experience and reducing churn.

• Sales pipeline building and pricing testing: We build out the sales pipeline in advance of the MVP launch. In tandem, we conduct pricing elasticity testing to determine optimal pricing strategies for different customer segments.

Conclusion

U+ offers a comprehensive approach to product and business development that covers everything from initial planning to commercialization and beyond. Our highly experienced teams have extensive experience with startups and large organizations alike, and know how to bring ideas to life. By partnering with U+, organizations can leverage our expertise and resources to turn their vision into a reality.

The U+ Method can efficiently and effectively lead the development, implementation, and improvement of innovations in any sector. To date, we have used this method to bring 100+ products to market, creating over $2 billion in value for Fortune 1000 companies. Check out U+ success stories here.