A hard truth is that most new products fail. Up to 85% of them, in fact. Put simply, that's because innovating and getting it right is hard. Hard, but not impossible.

By nature, any attempt at innovation will have unknowns. And with unknowns come risks. Taking a lean product approach helps us gain more certainty about what we design and deliver. That's because it gives us a framework for finding out what we need to know while creating customer value at the same time. It helps us achieve product-market fit, with less risk of spiralling costs and timelines that seem to sit forever on the horizon.

That said, some challenges are better suited to lean product development than others. Lean product development isn't a silver bullet. Like everything, it has advantages and challenges, which we'll go through in detail.

But first, a little intro to lean product development.

What is lean product development?

Lean product development is a fast, iterative framework that works in short, experimental cycles. Out of each cycle come results. And those results allow teams to learn quickly and make informed decisions about what to focus on next.

Behind it all is the idea of doing just enough. Build just enough, document just enough, design just enough, and test just enough. By doing just enough, teams can bring a product to life quickly and efficiently, saving money and accelerating learning.

Five advantages of lean product development

High customer satisfaction and loyalty rates

With lean product development, teams deliver what the customer truly values. Doing this means integrating customer feedback into processes to make sure the product does what the customer needs it to.

Sometimes, the feedback can show a need to change course, based on how customers use the product in the real world. Those changes can be big or small, but they always look to add customer value.

By using feedback, teams can focus on what the customer actually needs. And that can lead teams to happy, loyal customers.

Faster time-to-market and with reduced costs

Lean product development aims at efficiency (the clue is in the name). That often means two things:

  • having shorter development cycles, with rapid prototyping leading to a faster time-to-market for new features and products
  • reducing waste by identifying and eliminating non-value-adding activities which can reduce costs and improve resource utilisation

Many teams would be happy with just one of those outcomes. So, it’s easy to see the appeal in a framework that offers the possibility of achieving both.

Products and processes that continuously improve

Teams must be flexible when working in lean product development. Without flexibility, they won't be able to continuously improve.

From a product perspective, teams need to be ready to pivot based on feedback, market changes or other new information. And from the process side, teams must commit to interrogating and improving how things get done.

Motivated, accountable teams

Teams doing lean product development are very much that: a team. Together, they collaborate, continuously improve their processes, and enjoy the autonomy to make decisions based on what they learn through feedback.

Cost savings

By focusing on essential features and reducing waste, lean product development can often achieve cost savings.

Five challenges of lean product development

Committing to a cultural shift and team training

Efficiency is one of the big wins with lean product development. However, learning how to be efficient takes time and costs money.

For many companies, going lean requires a significant cultural shift. That can present barriers, such as:

  • changing focus from business value to customer value
  • transitioning from dependent, hierarchical teams to ones that thrive on autonomy
  • moving from a stable environment to one of innovation and experimentation

To help with that shift, teams will need trust, support, and training. And each of those can be hard to achieve, depending on how things are in the wider organisation.

The fine line between streamlining and cutting corners

Without the right approach, streamlining processes can stray into the territory of cutting corners. Cutting the wrong corners can impact the quality of the product, which is a shortcut to having unhappy customers.

Short-term gains vs strategic planning

Making a pivot based on customer feedback can lead to big wins: teams are responding to customer needs and achieving value. But sometimes those wins can be short-sighted and lead the team away from the wider organisation's long-term strategic plan.

In large organisations with many teams, keeping everyone aligned strategically is a challenge. One that shouldn't be underestimated.

Feedback that doesn't tell the whole story

Feedback comes in many forms; some more valuable than others. Lean product development is often used in innovative spaces. Sometimes, the products it produces are picked up by early adopters.

Early adopters can have different mindsets and behaviours to mainstream customers. As a result, feedback from early adopters isn't always representative of the wider market. Taken to an extreme, teams could end up making product decisions that absolutely meet the needs… of a small niche of early adopters.

Finding the balance between innovation and stability

Innovation can come at the cost of stability. Balancing the need to iterate and change at pace with the need for consistency and quality is tough.

Having clear goals to focus the team's efforts can help. So can managing how teams implement change and having strong communication. But each of these takes work to get right.

To lean or not to lean

As we’ve said, lean product development has its advantages and challenges. Choosing whether to go down the route of lean product development doesn't have to be a one way or the other decision.

Lean product development can work across all – or just part – of your product or organisation.

Sometimes, you might want to inject pace into a specific area of focus, rather than aiming at perfection. Using lean product development, you can quickly create a proof of concept that lets you prove or disprove a hypothesis.

If you're interested in lean product development, then we can help. Our lean product consultants will help you explore how you can add value to your organisation by delivering more with less.

You can also find out more in our ebook, Lean product development: a beginner’s guide.