Product Development Software Development

Software Development vs Product Development

Abhijeet Singh

13 August 2024

Software development vs product development is a dilemma that confuses many first-times. We often interchange the terms within the industry. Although this is common practice in recent times, and the terms are interchangeable to some degree, these are distinct processes that we should treat as such. A near-universal substitution of these terms can generate substantial confusion within the industry.

Novice software engineers and other new team members often have great trouble navigating this confusion. Especially since product managers tend to speak at the larger product level and view the software product as a small part of the ecosystem sometimes.

So, how similar are these processes? And what are the differences? Should you even be swapping these terms? This short blog post will clear your confusion once and for all.

Table of Contents

What is a Product?

We can best understand Product development from an economic perspective. The Economic Times simply defines a product as the ‘item’ offered for sale [1]. So everything from your groceries to your computers and cars, everything you buy is a product.

Products are further classified as products (tangible items like jewelry) and services (intangible items like insurance and customer support). For the purposes of this article, it suffices to think of them collectively as ‘products.’ So, a product refers to every item the consumer pays for.

What is Product Development?

Now that the definition of product is clear, it’s super easy to understand product development. Product development is the process of designing, developing, and delivering a product to the market. As such, product development is the core aspect of every business, be it a small-scale manufacturing unit or a multinational corporation.

A business cannot exist without a product (and service). The success/failure of any venture depends extensively on the product. That’s why experts have defined an extensive product development process over the years.

Stages of Product Development

Although the idea for your visionary business product might hit you on the drive to work, bringing the idea to fruition follows a disciplined and elaborate process that tries to maximize the chance for success. A typical product development process includes the following stages.

Ideation

Ideation involves brainstorming potential ideas for your new product. The goal at this stage is simply to generate as many product ideas as possible. Do not criticize an idea at this stage, no matter how silly. Ideation is best done with an interdisciplinary team to generate a barrage of ideas from different points of view. Techniques like brainstorming, mind-mapping, and focus groups are all effective ways to ideate. When you’ve run out of steam and ideas, you move on to the next stage of product development.

Feasibility Analysis

Remember how criticism was a strict no-no in the ideation phase? Well, here’s your chance to break free. Feasibility analysis involves validating the ideas on multiple parameters to eliminate unrealistic ideas. This process analyzes the possibility of realizing a successful product from various perspectives like economy, statutory compliance, returns on investment, market demand, and more. Shortlist the most promising ideas for the next stage.

Conceptualization

Conceptualization involves elaborating and adding more detail to your product ideas. The team creates a preliminary design of the product. They consider several factors like the technicalities of the product, design, ergonomics, packing, etc. The concept must be accurate enough to depict the final product as closely as possible. Teams usually create multiple product concepts routinely created and test them to select the best version possible.

Prototyping

Prototyping involves realizing a real-world model of your product to gauge its functionality and make the necessary modifications. It allows you to get a real feel of the product and collect feedback that you can incorporate to improve the final version. A product may go through multiple iterations of prototyping.

Product Development

Once the final prototype has been created and finalized, the product is ready for production. Concerns at this stage include sourcing the raw materials, selecting a suitable manufacturer, and handling supply chain, logistics, and warehousing.

Market Deployment

The product is finally taken to the market, where its success or failure depends on the customer demand. Marketing strategies like product placement might still be tweaked at this phase. Any future iterations/updates to the product have to go through the cycles of product development all over again.

What is Software Product Development?

If you understand product development, understanding software product development is a cakewalk. It is the process of designing, developing, and deploying a ‘software product.’

When companies create a software product, development is typically outsourced to an IT company. This firm plays the role of a manufacturer that simply receives the specifications and develops the product in line with these specifications.

Stages of Software Product Development

This process follows a distinct workflow of its own and consists of the following phases.

Requirement Gathering

The process begins with capturing the product requirements. An IT firm typically receives these requirements from the client, who has established them through the product development phases of ideation, validation, and conceptualization. An external software developer typically enters the product development phase during the prototyping phase.

Design

After collecting requirements from the client, the software developer starts designing a sturdy software architecture. He/she decides upon technologies at this stage and undertakes efforts to ensure the creation of a durable software product.

Implementation

Engineers begin programming the actual product at this phase. This is typically the longest phase of the software development process. Developers must ensure that every product requirement is met.

Testing

Testing ensures the implementation conforms to the specifications and user requirements. Depending on the development style followed, testing is either carried out in parallel with development or deferred until the development is complete.

Deployment

A thoroughly tested software product is deployed to a live environment where the end users can access it. The client reviews the product and ensures it’s on par with the specifications.

Maintenance

Any changes and bug fixes in the deployed product are carried out during the maintenance phase. Any feedback provided by the end users is also incorporated via maintenance updates. These are the stages typically followed during software development. The execution of this process varies significantly across methodologies like Agile, waterfall, and DevOps.

Software Development vs Product Development

The above discussion makes it abundantly clear that software product development is only one of the types of product development. Product development, a broader discipline, is followed to develop any new product across industries like manufacturing, automobiles, services, and more.

When the same company envisions a software product and undertakes the implementation with in-house resources, the lines are blurred between the processes of product development and software product development.

In most cases, however, software development is outsourced. Here, software development becomes a stage within product development and is handled by the software services provider. Understanding these differences is vital to clear communication and collaboration across teams and businesses. Software companies can serve their clients better if they work together with the product development teams of their clients. Designrush has some great inputs on how to choose a great software development company.

Even companies that handle software development in-house can build better products through close collaboration among product managers, project managers, and developers. A nuanced understanding of these terminologies is thus crucial to success.

At Cloudesign, our cross-functional teams not only work closely with the client, but they also go the extra mile to understand the product and the client’s processes. This approach helps us assist our clients with technology insights best suited to their needs. Work with us for a seamless software product development experience now.

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