Pace Product Development with Customer Input

With a clean product slate as a startup it’s easy to iterate and add functionality quickly. The key to remember, especially with customer driven development, is that product development should be paced with customer input. It’s too easy to keep adding features without giving adequate time and effort to solicit feedback.

Keep these in mind when considering the pace of development:

• Maintain a strong opinion of the product direction independent of prospects, analysts, customers, and competitors
• When considering feature requests, always ask if it is applicable to 80% of your desired customers
• Don’t be afraid to remove features or unnecessary complexity from the product if they aren’t adding value (this is a delicate area)
• Keep a good pace of development and make sure clients know about new features through blog posts, dashboard updates, social media, and newsletters

My recommendation is to pace product development with customer input while maintaining a strong internal product opinion.

What else? What are some other things to keep in mind when considering the pace of development?