According to Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, 95% of new products fail.
The primary reason for such a high failure rate is a lack of market need. The majority of physical and digital products don’t adequately resolve the pains of their target customers.
And one of the causes of this product-market mismatch is the absence of insights about competitors in the development process. Used in the right way, competitive insights clarify what other businesses are doing well, where they fall short, and how they create engagement through marketing.
If you put competitor intelligence at the centre of your roadmap, you’ll almost certainly increase your chances of realising untapped opportunities and overcoming the multiple challenges that inevitably arise pre-launch.
In this article, you’ll learn how to build a market-winning product development plan based on nuanced and comprehensive competitor intelligence.
Understanding The Product Development Roadmap
A product development roadmap is a clearly defined plan that charts the progression of a product or new feature from initial idea to launch. It includes key milestones and tasks and serves as both a practical schedule and a communication tool for ensuring alignment between all parties.
Competitive intelligence informs both the high-level vision and specific action steps of a development roadmap. It is important for painting a broad picture of the general market by identifying trends, unrecognised segments, and existing pain points. But it is also vital for executing precise aims, such as prioritising features and refining product positioning.
Product Development Roadmap: The 6 Key Stages
Development roadmaps typically follow a similar template, made up of several core components. Here is an overview:
Stage 1: Objectives
Objectives are the high-level goals for your product, defining its purpose and the pain points it solves. High-level objectives should always be based on a thorough analysis of your market.
You should work from a detailed picture of your potential customers’ needs and wants, the opportunities left open by competitors, and a sense of the direction of the market over the next several years.
Only 1.5 out of 7 product ideas become a reality, according to research by McKinsey. As such, it is good practice to encourage a culture that is as comfortable with discarding ideas as it is with adopting them.
Step 2: Features
Where objectives define what problems your product will solve, features focus on how it will solve them. Selecting and prioritising features is an essential step in building your development roadmap.
Distinct and higher-quality features provide a distinct competitive advantage, differentiating your product from competitors and ensuring customers remain loyal.
Competitor intelligence identifies which features are not currently provided by the market, which ones the majority of customers are unhappy with, and which can be deprioritised or dropped entirely.
Step 3: Timelines
Timelines offer an explicit schedule for feature milestones, releases (especially if they are phased) and marketing initiatives.
Adhering to timelines is crucial for timely market entry, capturing customer attention, which is usually heightened around a product launch or feature rollout, and ensuring that issues can be remedied effectively.
Step 4: Dependencies
Failure to account for dependencies is typically one of the main reasons product development stalls.
The dependencies section of your roadmap shows how tasks interrelate. They’re accompanied by processes and protocols for ensuring collaboration between team members and setting realistic expectations.
Managing dependencies effectively will significantly streamline development, leading to faster product delivery.
Step 5: Resource allocation
Resource allocation breaks down tasks in terms of time, finances and infrastructure requirements. This allows not only for the proper attribution of resources on schedule but is also imperative for cost-effective production and competitive pricing over the longer term.
Step 6: Adjustments
Product development is rarely linear. Mistakes will be made and roadmap changes will be required. It is therefore essential to have mechanisms in place whereby milestones and tasks can be reviewed and modified.
Competitive intelligence can help you make these adjustments. Often, insights can be validated quickly and integrated into your roadmap. For example, unforeseen market changes or pivots in competitor pricing may necessitate the need for additional features or an alternative marketing strategy.
Why You Should Incorporate Competitive Intelligence
At its core, competitive intelligence is valuable because it aids you in identifying and clarifying the precise needs of your market. It highlights where competitors excel and where they fall short, opening up the space for you to position yourself as a market leader.
Competitive intelligence insights allow you to answer several questions:
- Which features are popular with your competitors’ customers?
- Which high-demand features are your competitors overlooking?
- How are your competitors positioning themselves in their marketing?
- How are your competitors driving engagement through social media?
- What is customer sentiment around pricing?
Answering these questions has ramifications for both high-level and task-specific decisions. They enable you to improve on the successful aspects of your competitors’ products and marketing campaigns while monopolising on the areas they are missing.
In terms of ongoing development, it also allows you to maintain your reputation as an innovator with relevant and timely roll-outs.
Set Clear Objectives & Tasks
Defining specific objectives for your competitive development roadmap begins by clarifying your organisation’s high-level strategic goals.
Your broader aims will focus on the pain points your product solves, the gaps in the market you intend to address, and the general direction of your marketing and positioning.
Ensuring that your roadmap aligns with your vision will mean that measurable goals, particularly those relating to features, form a coherent whole. Common metrics by which to assess task completion include the following:
- Percentage of completed tasks
- Feature delivery rate
- Fault count and resolution rate
- Time to market (TTM)
- Return on Investment (ROI) for development efforts (especially for new features)
The specific feature and marketing tasks you set will be unique to your project. However, in all cases competitive insights will allow you to identify the most promising opportunities and help when deciding where to allocate resources (and where not to).
Recognise The Importance Of Feature Prioritisation
Your features are what most distinguish your product. The collection of benefits you provide are what encourage customers to purchase your product. But it is the features that act as a vehicle for these benefits.
Similarly, marketing and positioning are vital factors of your roadmap. But features act as the basis for your marketing.
However, time and resources will invariably be limited. So focusing on features that provide a competitive advantage will achieve two outcomes. You will meet pressing customer needs while also differentiating yourself from rivals.
Methodologies for feature ranking include the MoSCoW method (“must have,” “should have,” “could have,” “won’t have”) and the Kano model, which categorises features based on user satisfaction. The latter can be especially useful if you are testing as part of your roadmap.
Whatever model you opt for, a data-driven approach that uses competitor intelligence helps you refine your focus. It allows you to prioritise features that not only fulfil market needs but also build a compelling unique selling proposition at an attractive price point.
Allocate Resources Effectively
There are three aspects of resource allocation: time, expertise and budget. Effective resource allocation stems from an understanding of both untapped market needs and competitor strengths.
When you have insights into your competitors’ development priorities and a clear sense of gaps in the market, you can direct your budget to the areas that promise the best competitive advantages. Resources can be channelled to tasks that address these opportunities, ensuring maximum return on investment and reducing wasteful expenditure.
This doesn’t mean focusing exclusively on tasks and features that differentiate you from competitors. It is important to account for “must-have” features. But differentiation should form a substantial part of your roadmap.
Lastly, talent management is crucial. Your roadmap should include an understanding of your team’s various skill sets and availability and assigned responsibilities should reflect this.
This impacts not only efficient project execution but also means that key features are more likely to outpace your competitors because of their quality and superior functionality.
Set Clear, Accountable Timelines & Milestones
Clearly-defined timelines and milestones are necessary for sustained progress and the avoidance of scope creep.
Once you have established the broad aims of the product, created a feature outlay and marketing plan, you should segment these goals into smaller tasks. All while allowing for dependencies, delays and adjustments.
Tools for managing and tracking tasks include the following:
- Weekly progress meetings
- Gantt charts for visual timeline tracking
- Dependency mapping tools
- Prototype validation sessions
- Market trend analysis reports and competitive intelligence software
- Mid-project retrospectives
- AI-based tools (research indicates increasing adoption among businesses)
Ensure deadlines are realistic to maintain team motivation and work quality, and be willing to integrate new competitor and market data. Keeping the roadmap updated throughout the process is ultimately what will guarantee it remains competitive.
Competitive Intelligence Can Transform Your Development Roadmap
Your product development roadmap will involve multiple moving parts. For the best chance of success, it should account for high-level goals, prioritised features, resource constraints, market trends, and, above all, customer needs.
Integrating competitive intelligence into your product development roadmap is a tested, relatively straightforward way of increasing the chances that your product launch or feature rollout will result in a strong product-market fit.
It makes certain that all features are focused on customer pain points. And it allows you to weave together and use data about customer needs, market trends, competitor marketing tactics, pricing, and more.
Competitive intelligence turns your roadmap into an actionable guide that drives tangible results, both during and after development. And, vitally, it ensures your product stands out and thrives in a hyper-competitive digital market.
