Finding The Right Product Development Company
There are lots of experienced, skilled product developers on the market. Here are a few tips to help you select the right partner for your engineering needs.
1. Relevant prior experience
Whether you’re looking to break into a new market or you’re an established brand with a technical challenge, it’s useful to seek out a product development firm with relevant prior experience.
A product development firm with relevant industry experience provides a holistic approach to engineering work, ensuring technical precision and marketability.
2. Engineering and design should work in tandem
A thoughtful product development process should include engineers and designers. This will help ensure that your product is useful, functional, and marketable. A sleek design will not help a product to sell if it impedes usability or it cannot be manufactured.
At Goddard, our engineering and design teams work in tandem, helping to assure our clients that we bring technical precision and elegant industrial design to every project.
3. Design for manufacturability
It’s critical that your product development partner is thinking about the long-term consequences of their design choices: is this product designed for manufacturability? The transition to manufacturing is often one of the most challenging aspects of development – be sure to choose a partner who thinks about this step from the start.
4. Create with key stakeholders in mind
All successful product development efforts are rooted in the needs of the product’s user. When you’re picking a product development company, make sure to evaluate their human factors engineering capabilities. It’s essential that your product development partner consider your product’s key stakeholders as they build, test, and refine.
5. Do you need an on-site team?
Before you select a product development company, evaluate whether you need an on-site team or not. Some product development companies will send their engineers to work on-site with your team and some prefer to complete the work at their own facilities.
At Goddard, we love to work on-site with our client’s team but are also open to hosting your projects at our own offices in Boston and San Diego.
Getting Started With A Product Development Company
So you’ve selected a product development partner – great! Here are a few tips on what you may need in order to get things started.
1. Gather relevant documents
To keep your product development project moving smoothly, it’s important to gather any relevant documents such as user and market research, product requirements, or prior testing data.
2. Be clear about your goals
Communication is the name of the game. It’s critical that you clearly communicate your goals, timelines, and responsibilities with your chosen product development partner. An experienced product development company will create an environment that welcomes clear communication and openness between teams.
3. Starting at Phase Zero?
If you’re at the very start of your product development effort, an engineering partner can help you get started with your Phase Zero work. It’s helpful to be ready to answer a few key questions:
- What is the product?
- What do you expect the product to do?
- What are “nice-to-have” features and what are “need-to-have” features?
- Who are the product’s users?
Learn More – Phase Zero: The First and Most Important Step in a Product Development Plan
4. Review their product development process
Make sure you thoroughly review the firm’s product development process and philosophies before getting started. This will help ensure that your expectations are aligned with every phase of the product development effort.