Developing a Product Roadmap
Market Research
February / March 06
Volume 4 Number 1
So you have a great idea for a product—now what? Developing and refining your product or product idea is a major part of the planning process, and one of the most important things for an entrepreneur to address. By looking at different aspects of developing a product and readying it for the market, it is possible—and desirable—to build and maintain a product roadmap to ensure that all tasks are accomplished within a reasonable timeframe.
Some of the items that go into a product roadmap are: assessing potential product applications; developing the product, features, and future enhancements; planning for alpha and beta testing; manufacturing; researching the competition; ensuring customer or user feedback at various stages; developing the value proposition; applying for industry certifications or regulatory approvals; and possibly planning for new product line extensions or new markets.
Starting at the most basic level, many technical entrepreneurs have an idea for building a product around a certain technology. They may know what the technology's basic function will allow, but don't know a particular application or market in which it could be utilized. In this case, it's necessary to research the technology's functions to see possible industry utilizations. As a fictional example, you may have a sensor that detects multiple chemical vapors. You would need to investigate other chemical vapor detectors, and try to discern the various technologies used and their industry applications. In this case, you may find that possible industries are homeland security for military or first responder safety, environmental monitoring for air quality and manufacturing for safety and air quality.
Once you have potential applications, you need to look at current, competitive products in those industries. What are they used for specifically? What kinds of technology are they based on? Are there some things the industry needs that those products don't do? Can your technology improve what's out there? Is there really a need for the product? How big are the markets for those types of products? Are they certified or regulated in any way? What about indirect competitive products? (These are things that can substitute for your product, such as using a pencil instead of a pen.) After you answer these questions, you should have an idea of where to go with your idea and can start formulating a specific product roadmap.
Using our fictional example, you may find numerous products that satisfy most needs of Homeland Security, but there is still a need for lightweight portable chemical vapor detectors. Environmental monitoring needs the same types of detectors, but also needs larger, stationary devices. Manufacturing needs stationary products that only detect only a few certain chemical vapors at very low levels. Let's further say that your technology is better suited to stationary detectors for certain vapors, and the market sizes for manufacturing and environmental monitoring are both good. Current stationary detectors appear to use older technology that can't detect chemical vapors at very low levels. You decide to go after manufacturing first and environmental monitoring second, after looking at the industry dynamics.
Once you have a good, solid idea of what your product can or will be, you can start developing or prototyping it. Be sure to talk with as many people as possible in your chosen industry to make sure you are including everything necessary to make it top-notch.
When you have a working model, either put together by you or a manufacturer, you will need to go through alpha testing; this is ensuring that the product works from a technical perspective and actually does what you expect it to. You'll need to find a suitable environment for testing and possibly find a partner for testing. If it doesn't do what you expect, you'll need to revisit your product or manufacturing plans.
After a successful alpha test, don't go into full scale manufacturing just yet. You should do a sanity check with potential customers in your industry once again to make sure you are on the right track to meet their needs. With any new or revised information in hand, you can begin developing a marketing plan to integrate with your product roadmap.
Depending on your industry, this may be a likely point for addressing the details of any regulatory approvals or industry certifications for your product.
After the alpha test, most technology products go through a beta test, in which a real live customer or customers will use your product. You want to try to choose this tester carefully. The beta customer needs to have industry credibility, and also needs to understand that the product or installation process may have issues and that feedback is expected. If you provide the proper customer support, including troubleshooting and repair, the beta customer will likely be a willing reference in your future sales efforts.
After any adjustments from the beta test, you are now ready for full-scale manufacturing and can go to the next phase of your product roadmap (perhaps feature enhancements or adaptations to another industry) as well as implementation of the marketing plan. Remember, however, that you are not done at this point; competitors will adapt to your market entrance and you will always need to make adjustments to maintain and improve your market position.
Betsy Gillette is market planning director at Technology Ventures Corporation.
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