By Mark Walker, Revenue Director, Attest Does anybody reading this remember when most new products and technology were developed with the ‘waterfall’ approach?For those who don’t, here’s a quick primer.In a nutshell, the waterfall approach
How to take a more agile approach to consumer understanding
How to take a more agile approach to consumer understanding
By Mark Walker, Revenue Director, Attest Does anybody reading this remember when most new products and technology were developed with the ‘waterfall’ approach?For those who don’t, here’s a quick primer.In a nutshell, the waterfall approach to launching new products was to try and gather as much information on the end-product as possible, define all its requirements, then go through every phase of the development cycle, before finally launching a fully functional new product to the market.The problem? Very often, the final product wasn’t what the market needed (or wanted), and by waiting until the very end to find this out, incredible amounts of time and money were wasted.
From waterfall to agile
The solution? Agile software development, characterised by shorter development cycles (sprints), allowing for rapid feedback and iterations, which reduces risk and leads to better outcomes by discovering bugs or feature deficiencies earlier. Mobile Marketing
Thankfully the agile approach to product development has been very widely (if not universally) accepted and adopted, and the result has been an explosion in productivity, speed to market and successful launches.
Yet away from software development, the waterfall approach is still the de facto way of working. Take for example the approach to market research, consumer insights and brand development.
