This step involves brainstorming ways to solve each of the pain points you identified in the first step. There will likely be several ways to solve each issue. After your brainstorm, you’ll evaluate each possible solution to determine how it stacks up in reference to cost, competition, timeline, ...

Although nearly everyone who comes up with an idea is convinced it will work, creating a proof of concept to test your idea will ensure you arrive at the best version of it and will save you time and money in the process. Laying out every detail about your idea will help highlight gaps in your pr...

Forming an idea for a new piece of software is energizing. Brainstorming possibilities and envisioning potential inspires team members to create something new that solves a problem. Ideation is exciting, but without putting your idea through its paces, you may not end up with the product you expe...

• Validity- Before you skip to development, it’s crucial to know if your idea is feasible.
• Focus Group Testing- Taking a proof of concept and testing it with your potential user base will help you get early feedback on what people actually want.

There is not a cut-and-dry method for writing a proof of concept. The rules aren’t strict like they are for other written documents, like research papers, which must all follow the same outline of intro, methods, and conclusion. 

Instead, it’s important to make sure specific key topics are ...

It only makes sense to put time and money into building a product if people need it. Maybe those people are the company’s employees, who need to improve their productivity. Maybe they’re a new market the company isn’t currently serving but could easily reach. Whoever they are, you need to know th...

Proof of concept (PoC) is creating evidence and documentation about the feasibility of an idea. It outlines how the idealized product or service would become market-ready, how it would function, if it’s needed, and who is the target demographic. 

When it comes to software development, it ap...

Proof of concept always comes first. Think of this like a word document, where you have written down a fully formulated idea.

A prototype is the first, very basic iteration of your software idea. It takes the words from the p...

An MVP is different from a prototype in that it’s a fully-functional solution that you can put out into the world for use. While it will include only the most-important features that are essential for solving the primary pain points you identified, it should function on the user’s side just like ...

Your next step is to create a prototype that wraps your solutions into a rudimentary product that you can use to test with those you interviewed previously. This prototype should have the expected feature set and UI/UX.

Once the prototype is built, test it with your interviewees for additio...

From all of the information you’ve gathered in each of the previous steps, create a roadmap that describes what you’ve learned and outlines a recommended step-by-step process for building the product. Think of this roadmap as a set of blueprints for constructing a building. With this roadmap as a...

The more information you know about what your users actually want, the sooner you can focus on those features, cut unnecessary ones, and save yourself iteration time and expenses along the way. You can continue to fundraise at each point, using these supporting documents to show investors the pro...