Streamlining LED Product Development Processes

I’ve led significant products and successfully brought them to the finish line. Every time I take on a massive product, the first thing I do is plan for the pre-launch and post-launch activities. I brainstorm with product, UX, engineering, and QA teams to list all the different areas, milestones, risks, and dependencies. When building a new product or introducing significant enhancements, there are hundreds of things to track and align to ensure a timely launch and avoid getting stuck in an endless development cycle. Remember, coding-related activities contribute only 30% to a product's success. The remaining 70% comes from ideation, planning, communication, and adoption. Here are some of the crucial activities I focus on when I start working on a product launch: 1. Visualize the Go-Live Understand this: at this stage, most teams don’t even have a running product or final mockups yet. But we do have a high-level understanding of what it will look like. So, we start by imagining the change already in the hands of our users. Imagine the go-live day and map out every activity that comes to mind. This includes: - Product is live for consumers - Stakeholders are communicated with - A go-live support center is established - Customers and support teams are well-educated and informed Think about users, - What are they feeling? - What are they missing? - What questions do they have? - What challenges are they facing? - What do we wish we had done differently? We ensure that our entire team—engineering, product, support, marketing—knows how to support and communicate with both internal and external users about the new changes. 2. Visualize the Pre-Go-Live Map out every activity leading up to go-live. What needs to happen right before go-live? This includes: - Coding is completed - Extensive testing is conducted - Preparation for deployment - Production infrastructure is configured - Education, training, and pre-go-live communication 3. Create a Master List These brainstorming sessions result in a master list of activities—from initial development to launch. This list ensures we cover every critical step, such as: - UX design - Development - In-sprint testing - DevOps activities - Regression testing Additionally, it includes activities related to: - Risk management - Dependencies - Communication - Education & training Remember to balance the big picture with the details. We use JIRA to plan and track our day-to-day work. It’s invaluable for tracking details, but it can also be overwhelming. That’s why we need a high-level view with milestones, dependencies, and potential risks. This top-down planning approach—working backward from the launch to where we are today—has transformed how I manage and deliver big initiatives, and it can do the same for you. What approach do you follow when planning a significant initiative? Let’s discuss.

Speed matters! Your product pipeline isn’t just about design—it’s about market relevance, revenue, and competitive edge. 🚨 If your products take too long to launch, here’s what happens: ❌ You miss trends – Fast-moving competitors get there first. ❌ Costs spiral – Excess prototypes, late-stage revisions, and inefficiencies add up. ❌ Inventory risks increase – Overproduction or underproduction become costly mistakes. Yet many enterprise brands still operate with outdated workflows—flat sketches, endless physical samples, and disconnected teams. So, what’s the fix? Here’s mine:Identify what’s broken, and laser focus on that…. simple! We don’t try to solve every problem with 3D. Instead, we stay laser-focused on the bottleneck that’s actually slowing you down. 👉🏾 𝗜𝘀 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴? We will support you in identifying the best ways to streamline decision-making with 3D sampling - whether that means replacing your core sampling with 3D sampling, digitising physical colour runs, or enabling digital-first fashion sampling for your manufacturers. 👉🏾 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻? By working closely with your supply chain, we pinpoint solutions that alleviate production bottlenecks, helping establish a digital pattern or fitting process. 👉🏾 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝘆𝗻𝗰? 3D visualisation enhances visual communication, enabling designers to determine whether a style works aesthetically while allowing technical teams to foresee any production challenges before they become costly issues The goal isn’t to overhaul your process overnight—it’s to fix what’s failing first and move faster where it matters most. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗜𝘁 𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁? 🚀 Faster time-to-market – Your product reaches shelves ahead of competitors. 💰 Lower development costs – Fewer physical samples, fewer late-stage changes. 🎯 Better decision-making – Teams align earlier, reducing wasted effort. 🌍 Sustainable gains – Less waste, less excess inventory, more efficient production. The best part? These aren’t just quick fixes - they create a scalable, long-term advantage. What’s the biggest bottleneck in your product development process right now? Drop a comment below👇🏾—I’d love to hear your thoughts! #DigitalTransformation #Leadership #ProductDevelopment #FashionInnovation #INHOUSE

💡Combining Design Thinking, Lean UX, and Agile A combination of Design Thinking, Lean UX, and Agile methodologies offers a powerful approach to product development—it helps balance user-centered design with efficient concept validation and iterative product development. 1️⃣ User-centered foundation (Design Thinking): Begin by understanding the needs, emotions, and problems of the end-users. ✔ Start by conducting user research to identify and understand user needs. ✔ Gather insights through direct interaction with users (e.g., through interviews, surveys, etc.). Spend time understanding users' behavior, focusing on "why" rather than "what" they do. ✔ After gathering research, prioritize the most critical user insights to guide your design focus. Create a 2x2 matrix to prioritize insights based on impact (high vs low business impact) and feasibility (easy vs hard to implement) ✔ Begin brainstorming potential solutions based on these prioritized insights and formulate a hypothesis. Encourage cross-functional collaboration during brainstorming sessions to generate diverse ideas. 2️⃣ Hypothesis-driven testing (Lean UX): Lean UX helps quickly validate key assumptions. It fits perfectly between Design Thinking's ideation and Agile's development processes, ensuring that critical hypothesis are validated with users before actual development started. ✔ Formulate a testable hypothesis around a potential solution that addresses the user needs uncovered in the Design Thinking phase. ✔ Conduct experiment—develop a Minimum Viable Product (https://lnkd.in/dQg_siZG) to test the hypothesis. Build just enough functionality to test your hypothesis—focus on speed and simplicity. ✔ Based on the experiment's outcome, refine or revise the hypothesis and repeat the cycle. 3️⃣ Iterative product development (Agile): Once the Lean UX process produces validated concepts, Agile takes over for incremental development. Agile's iterative sprints will help you continuously build, test, and refine the concept. Agile complements Lean UX by providing the structure for frequent releases, allowing teams to adapt and deliver value consistently. ✔ Break down work into small, manageable chunks that can be delivered iteratively. ✔ Embrace iterative development—continue refining your product through iterative build-measure-learn sprints. Keep the user feedback loop tight by involving users in sprint reviews or testing sessions. ✔ Gather user feedback after each sprint and adapt the product according to the findings. Measure user satisfaction and track usability metrics to ensure improvements align with user needs. 🖼️ Design thinking, Lean UX and Agile better together by Dave Landis #UX #agile #designthinking #productdesign #leanux #lean  

Continuous Discovery. Continuous Experimentation. Continuous Delivery. This loop is trending—and it matters more than ever. Why? Because innovation happens no longer linear but exponentially. And yet… many product teams struggle speed up and to reduce their time to value—a critical but undervalued metric for product leaders. At one of my previous companies, we reduced our average time to value from 38 to 14 weeks—from first discovery to measuring feature impact. Here’s what made the difference: ⭐ Streamlined processes across Product, Design, and Engineering ⭐ Fixed handovers and reduced inefficient back-and-forth (e.g. version chaos in Figma drove our engineers mad) ⭐ Involved Tech Leads, QA, Data, and Support early to avoid last-minute surprises ⭐ Pragmatic validation: quick checks for low-risk ideas, thoughtful discovery for high-risk bets ⭐ Tech debt was treated like a first-class citizen, prioritized alongside new work ⭐ Refined bug severity levels—we overused the "critical" label ⭐ Bucketed work types (strategic initiatives, fast-lane items, bugs) and made distribution visible—yes, it was artificial, but it sparked the right discussions 👉 The closer we get to continuous learning, the more value we create—without sacrificing speed. It will never be perfect - but there is a lot we can do to speed up!