Founders often come to us with a product vision and a burning excitement to start development. They're ready to dive in and start building - and so are we. Here's our checklist that we go through with clients to make sure everything is ready for development.
The purpose of this checklist is to build confidence that we will come out the other side of our development project ready for market. It's about making sure that plans are in place for key pieces of the business that will make or break the product launch. It's also about making the development process as smooth as possible by figuring some things out up front.
The Product Development Checklist
1. Product Vision and Market Research
Before diving into specifics, we need to understand your product's place in the market. If necessary, we'll help you research your core problem and how others are solving it, determining whether you're creating a new product category or offering a better solution in an existing space. This research shapes your product strategy and informs key development decisions. We'll also explore your long-term vision to ensure early decisions support your growth path and help optimize development costs.
2. High-Level UX and Workflows
Think of this step as the part where you articulate the specifics about what your product does and how people use it. We like to document the core user journeys through your product and the key workflows that solve your users' problems. This includes mapping out the information architecture and data relationships that will support these interactions. This is also a great time to identify critical features that need to be part of the minimum viable product (MVP) and nice-to-have additions that can come later.
3. Visual Design Strategy
We've seen founders take a wide range of approaches to design, from neglecting it entirely to having every screen and interaction fully designed. Each situation is different so there's no approach that is the right answer for everyone. We often advise doing a minimum of some brand design work along with having a component library and some of the primary screens designed. This gets said a lot, but skipping design can lead to headaches and cost overruns down the road.
4. Customer Interest Validation
As founders and developers who are invested in understanding the product, it can be difficult to see things through the eyes of our users. We help validate market interest through interviews with potential users, landing page testing with email capture, and early access waitlist building. These interactions help sharpen your value proposition and ensure you're building something people actually want.
Once you have started creating designed screens, getting customer feedback before writing code can save months of development time. We like to conduct wireframe reviews with potential users to help confirm that the UI/UX resonates with users and that features are prioritized correctly.
6. User Acquisition Strategy
Having a great product isn't enough - you need a clear plan for finding users. We also want to establish the user acquisition plan prior to development as it will influence many decisions made during the course of development.
User acquisition strategies can include B2C strategies like targeted advertising, selecting the right content marketing channels, or planning a B2B sales team and processes. We'll help you evaluate influencer network strategies and community building approaches that align with your product and market. The key is creating a realistic, actionable plan for getting your product in front of the right users.
7. Post-Launch Operations Planning
Success after launch requires preparation. We'll help you plan customer support processes and user onboarding flows that ensure a smooth experience for early adopters. This includes setting up analytics and metrics tracking to measure what matters, creating a feature deployment strategy that maintains stability while advancing the product, and developing scaling and maintenance plans that grow with your success.
When You're Ready for Development
Once we have answers or plans for all seven items on the product development checklist, we are ready to start development. Most founders come to us with a good head start on these things, so our process often looks like helping get the things in their heads down on paper and filling in any gaps.
If you're thinking about doing custom development, get in touch with Andrew at Hypercolor for a free checklist consultation: