Everybody knows that two heads are better than one. Now imagine what two complementary teams could do if they were working together. When you’re getting ready to invest time, money, and effort in product development, co-creating with an agency is undoubtedly the best way to pool your resources to amplify the results and design a product that better meets market needs.
Why work with an agency?
There are many reasons why it’s worthwhile to work with an agency to develop your product. A good agency can, for example, give you new insights into your product, bring new skills to the table, and help you boost your effectiveness, speed, and agility during development.
An outside look from experts who have seen it all
- better explain the product to bring investors on board
- better target users’ real needs and key functionalities
- find ways to improve the user experience
- implement effective and proven development methods
- recommend new technologies
A proven approach to product development
Product development requires that you follow a rigorous process, especially when the product has to meet strict standards like when developing medical devices. You can’t afford to cut corners or overlook even the tiniest detail. By working with an agency, you’ll get access to a process that was developed by experts and has proven its worth time and again in all kinds of projects.
For example, NOVO has developed the IDEAL process, an approach that not only makes it possible to define user needs and the desired solution very early on, but also challenge them throughout the process. With the IDEAL approach, multiple prototype-test-refine cycles are carried out to ensure that the final product is perfectly suited to users’ needs.
Skills that complement yours
You may have the world’s best engineers, but do they have the experience to conduct quality user testing for your product? Are they well versed in industrial design and ergonomics?
When you use a product development agency, you can tap into a whole new pool of expertise to ensure that every aspect of your product is analyzed and studied from top to bottom.
Additionally, the agency team will be in the know about the latest user experience trends and up to date on the newest technologies that can help you make your product more appealing, first to investors, and then ultimately to end users.
Strength in numbers
How to work effectively with a product development agency
Choosing the right agency
The first step in creating the best possible partnership with an agency is choosing the right one. In addition to looking for a team that you connect with, you should also make sure that the agency:
- Is comfortable with the scope of your project
- Can help you define a realistic budget and timeline that will impress your investors
- Is transparent and willing to use collaborative tools for communication and project management
- Has experience with similar products and is familiar with industry standards, regulations, and technologies
- Complements your team well by providing expertise that you lack. Also, if your needs touch on several different aspects of product development, try to find an agency that offers them all. That will keep you from having to coordinate work across multiple agencies in addition to your own team.
- Is prepared to see the project through and is available to help you even after the product is ready. For example, the agency should still be around to assist if you need support or guidance on product certification, knowledge transfer, or after-sales service.
Implementing tools to build communication
At NOVO, for example, we use various collaboration tools for different needs: Slack (communicating with clients), Confluence (sharing meeting notes), Miro (creating mind maps), the Google suite (sharing documents) and Greenlight Guru (doing quality management).
Give the agency the resources they need
Get off on the right foot
To ensure the success of the project, you’ll need to take time, right from the beginning, to plan it out. To make that happen, you should hold immersion workshops where you can define and refine the project details together (value proposition, market, target customers, etc.).
Not familiar with immersion workshops? No worries. If you work with an agency that offers a 360° approach (strategy, user experience, engineering, and quality assurance) like NOVO, they can also help you prepare and hold these meetings.
Additionally, schedule project planning workshops to clearly establish from the start:
- Everyone’s roles and tasks to optimize each person’s contribution and avoid stepping on toes
- Schedules, accounting for everyone’s availability and each team’s capacity
- The user needs
- What you need to send the agency (for example, documentation, source files, design inputs for medical devices)
Stay in touch to stay on track
Take it a step further
Lastly, the most important thing when working with an agency is to have faith in them at every step of the way. Even if you know your product best, keep an open mind to suggestions and comments from the agency experts. Feel free to share your best practices with them, or make theirs your own.
At NOVO, every new partnership is a learning opportunity and we think you should see it the same way.
