Unlike standard software development, working on a startup involves building a viable business model in the process of its creation. This directly affects the success of each of the development stages. We will describe the specifics of the implementation of these stages in more detail below.
5 Main Stages Leading to Success
Below we will explain to you how to succeed at each stage of your brand-new project.
Ideation
The success of a startup is the success of a startup team which besides software engineers, a digital product designer, and QA experts, has to have some additional positions. Unlike a regular group that specializes in the production, a startup team provides business expertise, strategy, and the development of the conceptual part. And only after a detailed study of this stage, the team starts development.
Drafting technical and non-technical project specifications
Firstly, the work goes only according to flexible methodologies (scrum, agile) – so it is possible to implement and test all fresh ideas as quickly as possible.
Secondly, any technical documentation in this case becomes outdated after a few months. For example, you had new ideas and because of this, you could reconsider the vision of the project. Also, you could launch the first version, get feedback, and change the concept again.
In a startup team, there will always be an analytical group next to you: to check ideas for viability, generate and discuss changes, and add new visions to the roadmap.
Team selection
The team-building model is similar to the one that exists when developing a solution with an established business model, but such a team has three differences:
- The presence of an analytical group. Production is important, but without correctly defined business goals, analyzing the target audience, and testing ideas a startup will not survive.
- Scalability. The startup grows fast, along with its needs. Therefore, the necessary additional specialists join the “on-demand” team. For example, you may need a content manager or a journalist if your startup works with large volumes of content; a product design service specialist for solutions with non-trivial functionality; or a marketer when a project has to be promoted.
- Team consolidation. The team is guaranteed to be assigned to the project not only for the entire development period but also after the launch – this ensures that the project will be supported as quickly as possible, without the cost of familiarizing the new developer with the project.
MVP development
As with any other software, the MVP development process is about creating an architecture and then synchronously implementing the program code, product designing (in some cases it is better to resort to the services of a specialized product design agency), and unit testing. the only difference between a full-fledged product and an MVP is a limited set of features and the provision of a scalable architecture that would allow increasing the number of these features over time with minimal time.
Also, unlike products with a ready-made business strategy, it is necessary to test your app or website product design more often, both quantitatively and qualitatively. This means that in addition to statistical data, you will also need to use focus groups in testing, consisting of potential representatives of the target audience of your product.
Note that in cases with a rather complex functionality and a non-trivial choice of the technological concept for product designing, before the implementation of the MVP, it would make sense to do prototyping and, accordingly, perform all of the above processes first with the prototype and only then, after it is approved by the focus group, proceed to the implementation of the MVP.
Advertising campaign
You need to deal with promotion already at the stage of product and services design and start preparing the campaign during the development of the first version of the product. The specifics of startup promotion are also that the resources for promotion are often limited. Thus, the task of the first stage of promotion becomes the search for the most effective channels for the project.
The advantage of this approach is that simultaneously with testing the product MVP itself, its advertising campaign is also tested. Thus, by the second release, you get a product developed in the right direction, and a campaign adjusted to take into account all the specifics of a particular case. And the project is sent to the market fully prepared.
Conclusion
If you want to entrust the implementation of your startup to a team that has extensive experience in software development service and product design, feel free to contact us. We have successfully completed more than 100 projects, some of which are startups. We also dedicated over 240 hours of consulting to startups. Therefore, you can be sure that we will benefit your project.
