Building a software product is not an easy task, especially if it is the first time your company faces the challenge of creating a new digital solution.
Digital products are the reflection of a business model or a new service where an organization wants to innovate. This is why embarking on the development of your next product can be both an exciting and challenging journey.
Here we tell you what these challenges are and the most effective way to face them in order to minimize the associated risks and achieve an outstanding result.
Unclear Product Vision
A lack of clarity regarding the requirements and scope of your objectives is a major challenge in developing a digital product. Often, project sponsors have ambiguous expectations, and corporate processes are not equipped for the transformation that implementing a new product entails. This can lead to a loss of product focus and deviation from expected outcomes, ultimately resulting in wasted time and resources.
Solution
Gather as much information as possible about your new product and communicate it with your internal team and all relevant stakeholders. Collaboratively establish the objectives you aim to achieve.
Implement methodologies such as Lean to define a clear business hypothesis, enabling you to create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This approach helps to shorten development cycles and incorporate feedback from the target audience at various stages. By doing so, you can adapt the product to emerging needs while maintaining a strong focus on delivering value.
Difficulty in Estimating Time and Budget
At the start of any new IT project, common questions are: “How much will it cost?” and “How long will the development cycle take?” These questions have long been major challenges in software development, primarily due to the high uncertainty involved in project execution.
Your organization might have allocated an initial budget for product development, but it’s often unclear if this amount will be enough to successfully complete the project.
Solution
Build a roadmap for your product, dividing it into phases. Prioritize the parts of the product that are likely to yield the highest return on investment and have the most positive impact on your users. If you’re unsure how to proceed, Activeone can guide you every step of the way.
Rely on an experienced technical team to estimate each stage of the product development. Focus only on elements that are highly valuable to your users, generate return, and are technically feasible.
Insufficient talent
If defining your project is a challenge, sometimes finding the right talent can also be a challenge. The IT industry is growing at a rapid pace, therefore, the supply of developers is increasingly scarce and it becomes difficult to find the best team for your project, which also fits your budget.
Solution
Increasing your IT staff can, in most cases, be an economically beneficial decision, as it gives you great flexibility and helps you optimize your investments, while allowing a specialized development company to advise you in the creation of your new team. In addition, developers in certain countries, such as Colombia, can offer high quality services while remaining affordable.
Unmotivated talent
Developers can be demotivated by multiple factors, especially those that have to do with their salary compensation and the technologies they work with.
Every developer is an expert and enjoys working on the technology they know, if they are forced to work on a technology they are not passionate about or do not consider a trending technology, they will quickly lose motivation and end up leaving the project.
Solution
Keep in mind that once you get the necessary talent you must keep them motivated, communicate the purpose of your product and make the people working on it feel that they are helping not only your company, but that they are solving a much bigger problem.
Inappropriate technology selection
When you wrongly select a technology for your project, different scenarios may arise: first, that the technology is uncommon or very few developers master it and, second, that it has a large learning curve, which will cost you much more time and money to add new talent.
Solution
We have seen hundreds of projects fail because of the incorrect use of a technology, so you should take into account these recommendations:
- Select a technology with a simple or intermediate learning curve, if the project allows you to do so.
- Make sure there is a large number of experts who know the technology, this is visualized by the community behind it, the more community there is, the more opportunity you will have to find talent quickly.
In a nutshell 🌰
These are probably the most important challenges you should take into account in the development of a new digital product. If they seem scary to you, don’t worry, these are frequent challenges, but above all, highly preventable and solvable. In general, the solution to all IT problems revolves around skills, experience and knowledge.
The important thing is to be aware of these challenges and have the necessary strategies to mitigate their impact, thus achieving the development of a successful product.
At Activeone we have faced these kinds of challenges in all types of companies and we know how to help you find clear solutions that will allow you to achieve your goals and accelerate your organization’s growth.
