How do you improve time to market while saving software product quality?

A faster time to market (TTM) is vital to taking leading positions and maximizing return on investment. Since competition across numerous industries is as high as it perhaps has never been before, a late launch of a software solution may negatively affect revenue.

Analysts at McKinsey found that enterprises lose on average 33% of after-tax profit if they deliver digital products 6 months late. Have a look at a graph to find our how TTM is correlated to the cost and profit.

As you can see, the development price may not depend on the length of TTM. By reducing software time to release, a company is able to fill a niche and outrun rivals much easier while pushing up sales. Furthermore, an organization can become a pioneer to introduce a new kind of software system, leading to a higher income. With the view to achieving the best results, pioneers can increase the entry barriers for other businesses. For instance, it is possible to offer lower prices and develop an omnichannel sales strategy.

In this article, our software experts will describe how to improve the time to market for your application. But first, let’s consider what the software time to market actually means.

What is software time to market?

Software time to market is a period from the very start of project development to the moment it is available to the audience. TTM also stands for new features and updates introduced by an organization to satisfy end-user goals and preferences.

The length of TTM depends heavily on the purposes a company pursues to accomplish. There are different types of TTM that include:

• Fastest. This approach is especially popular among technology startups and enterprises that operate in rapidly changing environments. To raise funds, entering the market as soon as possible is key to success. In order to improve time to market, businesses generally create minimum viable products (MVPs) to showcase their ideas to investors, test various hypotheses, and collect user feedback.
• Scheduled. This TTM is applicable when the launch date is fixed in the contract signed between the client and an IT service vendor.
• Agile. In some cases, brands and institutions recognize the high probability of making changes to software requirements during the software development process. However, it is still important to shorten time to market and stick to a scheduled release.
• Sales priority. This type of TTM is used when a timely launch is everything to attract the audience and earn income, for example, when the client aims to launch an online marketplace platform just before Christmas.

However, creating a software solution as fast as possible will not be beneficial if its quality is poor and user expectations are not met. In this regard, it is essential to implement best practices that will allow you to improve time to market whilst building a top-notch product.

How to improve time to market of a software product

1. Hiring more software experts

To reduce time to market, an organization can hire the maximum possible number of designers, developers, and quality assurance engineers. If you already have in-house resources to deliver a software project, you can hire software experts to extend your team by, for example, turning to an IT outsourcing company.

2. Creating an MVP

Making an MVP is among the best ways to improve time to market whilst increasing project success chances. An MVP is a software solution that contains a minimum set of features necessary to address a certain issue.

With an MVP, companies significantly cut TTM and expenses. For example, building an MVP of a digital healthcare marketplace will take between 4.5–5.5 months while delivering a fully-fledged platform may require up to 10 months or more.

Furthermore, businesses and institutions can also test various hypotheses, collect the audience’s feedback, and get an understanding of how to extend the application according to end-user needs. This approach is widely employed among startups that aim to showcase their product ideas to investors and raise a capital. To learn more about the benefits of MVP development, read our article on the topic.

3. Purchasing white label software

By purchasing white label software, enterprises can reduce time to market from months to a few weeks or days. Initially built by a third-party IT partner, a white label solution generally contains a basic set of features required to perform certain tasks and serve numerous companies.

Providing clients with embedded functionality to customize the product (moving design elements, using different colors, placing logos, changing fonts), white label software lets businesses tailor the app to their brand style and objectives. Thanks to this approach, you will significantly cut software time to market and expenditures.

4. Hiring a software engineering firm

Businesses can waste a lot of time and resources when assembling in-house or freelance teams on their own. The recruitment and onboarding of a single candidate may take up to six months. Additionally, it is important to establish team cohesion, which can be quite challenging when nobody knows each other.

With the view to preventing these bottlenecks and improving product time to market, it is possible to approach a custom software development company. In this case, the project start generally takes 10 days while the requirements are discussed and an agreement is signed.

After analyzing product specifications, an IT service vendor will provide IT professionals with the necessary skills and knowledge. A software engineering firm will also assign a project manager to set up effective communication and control workflows.

5. Following DevOps best practices

By using DevOps, a company can shorten time to market by 2–3 times whilst enhancing software quality. Representing a set of practices that combine software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops), DevOps focuses on cross-team collaboration, workflow acceleration, fast feedback, and iterative improvement. DevOps comprises continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), microservice architectural style, infrastructure as code, monitoring and logging, as well as communication and cooperation.

For instance, by enabling a CI/CD pipeline, software engineers streamline the process of building, testing, and deploying applications. Thanks to rapid code changes and error detection, CI helps programmers speed up the app assembly. Technically speaking, software experts put the written code into a shared repository with each check-in verified, which allows for identifying and fixing bugs almost instantly.

Serving as an extension of CI, continuous delivery is a fundamental DevOps practice that aims to automatically deploy code changes to the testing and/or production environment. By employing CD, it is possible to launch projects and their updates even on a daily basis.

6. Using the Agile approach

To improve time to market, an organization can approach a reliable IT service vendor that follows Agile best practices. The Agile methodology encompasses a variety of iterative, adaptive, and lightweight ways of creating software solutions.

Agile focuses on providing team cohesion, making changes in a speedy fashion, continuously delivering new features, and establishing close cooperation between the client and IT professionals. Using Agile, companies organize a more effective development process where each specialist has the necessary skills, knows what to do, and is aware of project progress.

With Agile, software engineers implement new functionality every 2–3 weeks to demonstrate the result to the customer, collect feedback, and modify the app or website accordingly. This way, Agile helps build software products faster while receiving the outcome that meets its purposes and expectations. Get to know how Agile can allow you to get the highest software quality.