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Introduction
The scale, definition
In the digital product development process, “scaling” or “scaling up” gives the product durability and stability. After a series of tested, small but significant iterations, you can meet and anticipate market requirements. When you scale your product, it means not only responding to user comments and suggestions, but also anticipating their needs.
The value of a scale practice
Will growth be positively impacted? When it comes to the number of users of a digital production, the answer is a resounding “yes.” However, if you specialize in a specific market, you still hope to attract as many consumers as possible.
A journey in the designer's thinking?
Hopefully, until now, when designing your product, you have kept the users and the market in mind. Their needs provide the priorities for the design and development team. Assume that your product concept has been validated, proved worthy of being followed by consumers, and that your fledgling product has evolved (by undergoing repeated cycles of improvement), creating a good product-market fit. Now it's time to scale up. Not only should your product be functional and sellable, but it should also be able to evolve with your users. There are two key factors here: the growing size of the user group and the new development requirements coming from an expanded consumer base.
“At 40/60 studio, this is another step in our digital product development process, based on a combination of the lean startup approach and the agile scrum framework. Maybe we've supported you from the start of the process, or maybe you've come this far without us, and now you want to benefit from scaling expertise. In any case, we will take care of your product and ensure that it is robust enough to withstand your expansion plans.” Camille Hautreux, Product Director
What is scaling (i.e. scale)?
Even though defining perfection is probably the work of a philosopher, we can agree: the objective of developing your product has so far been to continuously improve it, so that it best fits its market. Scaling is about ensuring that the product is robust enough to survive and thrive in this market. The overall objective is to obtain an effective, secure product at the service of a greater number of users.
Dealing with a large scale of users
The success of a project and the resulting scaling often require businesses to grow other lines of business, including sales and marketing strategies, hiring, and perhaps even lead to the search for additional funding.
In terms of digital product development, this means adapting the product to cope with the rapid growth of the user base, usually by developing an improved version through iterations, each modifying or adding something to the product, and followed by user tests to validate the effectiveness of the change.
A need for adaptability
In reality, the product you launched, this product that fits the needs of the market so well, is not your final product. The world is changing and so are the markets. Scaling is how you keep your product aligned with these changing markets.
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Why scale your product?
In a nutshell, if you want your product to play a part (a big part?) of the market, but also that it keeps and extends it, so you must evolve your product. It is as simple as that.
At 40/60, when scaling your digital product and maturing, we focus on three main goals:
- Growth
- Integration of new functionalities or technologies
- Improving UX and product reliability without affecting current performance
In practice, what this means is that we are looking closely at ways to expand the reach of the product, both horizontally and vertically. We apply our engineering expertise to ensure scalability and stability. We are refining the current experience and looking for opportunities for new functionalities adapted to both the product and the market.
When to scale my product, how do I know what I need to change?
While options for change and improvement can come from anywhere, once your product is on the market, there are several common sources for potential scale-up work:
Additional or new user needs
The development process has so far included input from current users and repeated testing with the first of them. But... the more people using your product, the more feature suggestions you'll receive; and some of them won't be niche or individual wishes: they'll be must-haves.
Monitoring user activity
By tracking how people use your product, you can gather useful data, including what features are most popular, which are the most avoided, and which features users frequently give up. This monitoring process provides you with data in order to more clearly establish the changes that will benefit your users.
Users will find problems for you
As “perfect” as your product is, your users will find problems with it; often you wouldn't have thought of (which is why the user perspective is so useful).
Unexpected uses
Not everyone is going to use your products the way you intended. Maybe the main functionality of the product is not accessible to a significant percentage of users, maybe a feature that you considered “useful but not essential” is turning out to be extremely popular. How people use your product on a daily basis can indicate unexpected and successful development paths.
What are the benefits of scaling the product?
Scaling your digital product has the following benefits:
Vitesse
Scaling should be about small, quick changes. At this point, your product is already on the market. Responding effectively to user needs and feedback will help you build your audience.
Effectiveness
The rapid process of iterations and tests during scaling optimizes the use of developer time.
A good UX
Small (but cumulatively significant) changes in scaling mean minimal disruption and difficulty for users. In an ideal world, they notice and appreciate improvements without the negative aspects of change.
What does our Scaling service include?
- Setting up an agile organization
- Interviews, user research and analysis
- Redesign or optimization of key UX elements
- Update the identity and consistency of the user interface
- Implementing new features
- Creation of a design system
- Development solution analysis and architecture required for scaling
- Securing and updating databases
- Hosting solutions update
- Recipe
- Maintenance, monitoring, backup and back-up
