20 Steps To Shipping A New Product

1. Identify an unmet market need and its target users.
2. Propose a hypothetical product that would be viable to design and develop in time to meet the need.
3. Gather business requirements from stakeholders in the proposed product.
4. Write stories in which your target users experience your product.
5. Reduce the experience design stories to features and specifications.
6. Architect the product based on requirements, stories, and specifications.
7. Prioritize the features according to product-market fit and ferment.
8. Write unit, functional, and integration tests that describe the features.
9. Develop the minimally viable set of features for an alpha (secretly testable) product that passes the tests.
10. Release the alpha product and secretly test it, incorporating testers' feedback into stories and specs.
11. Prioritize a set of additional features that will allow beta (public) testing of the product.
12. Write further tests that describe this set of beta features.
13. Develop the set of beta features.
14. Define your metrics, and describe the expected effects of the product in the market.
15. Fit the product with a comprehensive suite of analytics and performance tracking tools.
16. Evaluate and augment the product's security and speed.
17. Release the beta product to a limited audience, carefully monitoring its reception.
18. Tune the beta product with new features informed by analytics and performance tracking.
19. Write tests first, then develop and release the tune-up features until the beta product is ready for the world at large.
20. Announce the product to the market, continue iterating.