Product-centered design is not just a buzzword. In fact, it’s fast becoming the new gold standard for product development. According to industry research by Gartner, an estimated 85 percent of organizations have either adopted or are planning to adopt a product-centric application delivery model. Moreover, more than half of these organizations report that their goal is to move entirely to a product-centric model.
The reason that a user-centered approach to software development is so important is that it’s the most effective way to achieve product innovation. User-centered software development takes the best parts of agile development methodologies and merges them with user-centric best practices. The end result is that user-centric development can escape the problems that drag down more traditional software development practices. Let’s explore four key ways that an agile, user-centered approach to software development enables product innovation:
Your Team Will Get End-User Feedback Early and Often
Traditional software development is developer-centered, not user-centered. A typical development team will do much of their core work in a silo. They will build iterations and prototypes, review and test their work, and make changes until the end product adheres to specifications and quality standards—all within a relatively insular development silo.
User-centered software development does not allow developers to work in silos. Instead, developers must solicit customer feedback early and often. Even before the development process begins, user-centered development requires customers to provide feedback on products that have yet to be built. The development team then uses this early feedback to shape the product design and functionality. Later, throughout the development process, customers continue to provide feedback, including completing user validation for prototype products.
Throughout this process, user feedback truly drives improvements and enhancements to the final product. Customer feedback isn’t just one of many considerations: It is the most important type of feedback. Moreover, it sparks a level of product innovation that simply wouldn’t be possible if only internal teams were reviewing their own work.
Your Team Will Be Empowered to Take Strategic Risks
Most software development teams see their creativity stifled by traditional development processes. That’s because traditional software development puts more focus on adhering to project deadlines, budgets, and product specifications. Even though developers will develop some of their best ideas for product innovation midway through a project, traditional project management does not allow them to pursue this creativity.
User-centered software design turns this traditional project management paradigm on its head. Development teams are allowed and empowered to exercise more creative control. They can make changes to plans and directions, even when these changes trigger scope creep and cost overruns. And it’s not that developers are allowed to run hog wild—instead, they develop such a strong command of their organization’s big-picture goals, needs, and priorities for the product that they can be trusted to take strategic, informed risks. The end result is that developers help to build the most innovative, customer-friendly products possible.
Your Team Will Embrace Cross-Functional Collaboration
When users are at the center of software development, developers cannot work on their own. Not only does the development team need to be constantly interfacing with customers, but the team also needs to be collaborating with other teams across the organization, especially sales, marketing, customer service, and legal. These teams will provide cross-functional perspectives, experiences, and skill sets that developers need to tap into as they work to build truly innovative products.
Your Team Will Live by a Continuous Improvement Philosophy
Continuous improvement is always a goal of software development, but tight budgets and compressed timelines often make continuous improvement impractical to achieve. A user-centric approach to software development makes it impossible for organizations to shortchange continuous improvement—for the simple reason that customers won’t allow it.
When an organization is truly listening to its customers, it must necessarily commit to making continuous changes to its products. It is through living by a philosophy of continuous improvement that a company ensures that its software products stay relevant and useful to customers over the long term.
Final Thoughts
Companies are gravitating to user-centric software development because it just makes sense. With an agile, user-centered approach to developing products, a development team can expect to benefit from end-user feedback early and often, to be empowered to take strategic risks on their own, to embrace cross-functional collaboration, and to truly live by a philosophy of continuous improvement.
Outcode’s development experts embrace an agile, user-centric approach across all of our development work. Not only do we use this approach for all of the work we do for all of our clients, but we also specialize in facilitating adoption of this approach by our clients’ in-house teams. To learn more about Outcode’s user-centered development approach, please reach out to us. We’d love to share more.
