Developing new proprietary software takes time, and your time to market can be what sets your software above the rest. In this article, we’ll look at:
- What time to market means in software development
- Why time to market is an important metric for your company to consider
- Ways to reduce your time to market
What Is Time to Market?
So what does time to market really mean? Time to market is commonly defined as how long it takes a product to go from initial idea to released product. While there is a large variation on how long the typical time to market process takes from industry to industry, the concept remains an important piece of product development.
For software, time to market impacts a wide variety of situations, like major releases of a brand-new custom software product or pushing a new update that helps keep your software at peak performance for your business’s needs.
How the Software Development Lifecycle Fits In
Here are pieces of the software development lifecycle that are included when calculating time to market for software products:
Planning
To start the time to market period, the project team determines the scope of the project based on client needs, client goals, and development capacity. Using this information, a timeline is established for the project as a whole, which we’ll look into later in this article.
Design
During this stage, the project team designs how the software will look and function. Using mockups of both user experience and interfaces, the project team and business teams will work together to determine the final ‘blueprints’ of the software project.
Development
Using the timeline and guidelines determined in the planning and design phases, the development process can now begin! Here, software developers write the majority of the product’s code and do some testing.
Testing
A critical step in the product development process, meticulous testing makes sure the software tools are ready for users and free of bugs. Testing ensures the product is ready to reach the market and serves as the final hurdle to pass before release.
Deployment
Once your product has been deployed and made available to users, you can calculate your time to market period!
Simply put, time to market can be calculated as the difference between the start date of the planning process and the initial release date of a product in the software development lifecycle.
How to Determine Your Time to Market
Use this flexible definition to find what makes the most sense for your business model: should the start date be when you have identified the project’s scope and major risks? Will your end date be for a minimum viable product launch or a full release? Find what works best for your software product and set clear goals with your business team.
Regardless of the end result, being able to accurately estimate how long the development process will take for a product is invaluable. Let’s look together at what makes time to market an important factor to consider for your software development projects.
Importance of Reducing Time to Market
Speed is not often the best metric to use when determining how successful a business or product can be. So why is time to market any different?
Most importantly, having the optimal time to market speed (which is often very short) gives your product a competitive advantage. Having development processes that change focus too often or take too long give your competitors the opportunity to pull ahead and capture your potential market share.
It is also important to consider the financial implications of reducing your time to market. Meeting or exceeding your time to market goals means your product stays competitive and guarantees you the most optimal pricing of your products.
On the other hand, software and technology as a whole are constantly changing. As your product idea becomes more well established, it will not be able to yield the same incremental returns. Your product idea or features could even become redundant for your users which can have deeper, lasting impacts on your business strategy.
5 Ways to Reduce Time to Market
Now that we’ve covered why it’s important to streamline your development processes and reduce your time to market, let’s look at 5 different ways we can accomplish that goal:
Optimize workflow
One of the first big steps you can take when reducing time to market is to set a standard for how you want to manage your workflow. Proper project management can help organize your team and ensure everyone is working efficiently and meeting goals as development moves along.
Another easy way to optimize your team’s workflow is to assign clear roles at the start of a new project. Who is responsible for which deliverable components? How should everyone work together? This also becomes important when external teams are involved, such as data analysts or UI/UX designers.
Let’s make a distinction here though, optimizing your team’s workflow is not the same as overhauling your team’s workflow. Work with existing team structures and strategic approaches to determine what works best for your team. Realistic and supportive workflows help a team work successfully and even surpass goals!
Define Scope and Stick with it
When time is a constraining factor in the development process, adding additional scope can bloat an already strained timeline. A great way to combat scope creep is to work on your team’s communication processes.
Make sure your development team has a clear hand-off process to keep deliverables moving at an appropriate pace and a way for developers to push back on potential scope creeping (often in the form of “small changes” or “just one more thing”). Something as short as an hour of extra work here or there can add up fast when time to market is something your team is focusing on!
Something you should be careful about when sticking with a pre-defined scope is avoiding trading off features or the quality of the features you include for the sake of a faster, smaller scope. It can be risky to trade off a feature in return for a faster time to market; it’s important to consider all the possible consequences and rewards before a decision is made either way.
Quality Control and Compliance
Getting a shorter time to market does not mean giving up quality assurance testing! Shortcuts can get your software into the hands of your customers faster, but you’ll want to be careful they don’t lead to your project being outside of compliance standards.
Having a faster time to market can be great, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of your product’s quality. Testing should be done by the development team as they build your solution and by quality assurance analysts as solutions are completed to catch any potential bugs or workflow issues in the program before launching.
Make sure once your product is ready for testing your team members have clear and effective ways to track bugs and results. Collecting and sharing information about your product in real time helps reduce the time it takes to optimize your software for your needs.
Using An Agile (Little “a”) Mindset
Staying agile and consistent with your development process can be the best method of reducing your product’s time to market. Well defined workflows lead to less confusion and less time spent wondering how to proceed to the next task.
To start, use a tool to help measure and monitor workflow (a typical example is Jira) so any bottlenecks are quickly identified and can be easily remedied. Another great benefit of having a transparent development process is how easy it is to change your strategies if something stops working. This transparency should be across your entire team, not just your developers!
Often when working on a software project, your requirements will change. Rather than letting this derail your schedule, embrace it! Software needs will often change as your product concept becomes a reality. Using a strategic approach to fold any updates into your planned workload without bloating the project’s scope is a vital step to bring your product to market quickly!
Consider Outsourcing
An efficient way to improve speed is outsourcing some of your product’s development process. Finding the right combination of in-house and outsourced development teams can help your team focus on what they do best. Outsourcing also helps prevent developer burnout and helps widen the skillset your team has available to pull from.
Trying to find a software development partner can be an overwhelming process, so where do you start? A great start is to establish what you need out of a partner. Make a clear list of expectations and what services your project will require from an outside source. This includes any specific languages required, if you need to outsource product testing, and a clear definition of scope for the project.
Any outsourced team you use should be aligned with your project’s key components, including priorities, budget, communication style, and amount of support. Failing to see eye to eye on major pillars of the project will lead to both parties being frustrated and could even mean missing your expected product launch dates.
How Geneca Can Help You
A dedicated team like Geneca can help with your custom software project from the beginning of any idea to bringing your product across the finish line. Here at Geneca, we have over 20 years of experience helping our partners focus on business growth by tailoring our services to their unique needs.
Our team is happy to help you navigate your goals and budget through open, honest conversations. We don’t have any salespeople, and your conversation will be with senior leadership that has experience building software, managing projects, and delighting partners. From staff augmentation to a dedicated team for your development project, Geneca will work with you to find what fits your business needs best.
If you’re ready to get the ball rolling on a new project or need help with getting your current project to market, reach out to Geneca today!
FAQs
What does time to market mean?
What does a faster time to market mean?
How can I improve my product market time?
1. Optimize your team’s workflow and processes
2. Define a clear scope for your project and stick to it
3. Make sure that you’re not sacrificing quality for speed, and strike a balance between the two
4. Use a flexible mindset to approach any bumps in the road that may come up
5. Consider using an outsourced team to help you reach your goals in a timely manner