As important as building a product is setting in place a strategy for your product development life cycle. The presentation touches upon the different aspects you have to keep in mind while putting in place a product development strategy. A product development strategy will allow you to focus on the development process while ensuring that you are creating something that is easy to maintain and extend.

1. Setting in place a Product
Development Strategy
Anoop John
Founder & CTO

2. Product Development Strategy
What is Special About Product
Development?
Vision for a longer term
Ability to keep building on top
Ease of maintaining
Ease of making global changes
People involved will change over life time of product
Core capabilities of product will grow over time
Interface could change multiple times over time

3. Product Development Strategy
Parts of a Product Development Strategy
Tools and systems to be used
Processes and protocols to be followed
Getting the right team in place
Building discipline in requirements
Setting priorities and sticking to it
Setting time lines

4. Product Development Strategy
Building a Product is all About Building
Frameworks
Frameworks for handling common tasks in the
system
Allow easy modification and extension of features
Frameworks for handling logic, UI, interfacing with
third party systems
Frameworks to allow developers to follow standard
practices for modifications
Frameworks to avoid over customization and at the
same time allow custom capabilities

5. Product Development Strategy
Setting Systems in Place
Systems for managing code
Systems for managing deployments
Systems for managing infrastructure
Systems for managing testing
Systems for managing developer environments

6. Product Development Strategy
Setting Processes in Place
Deployment processes
SDLC processes
Workflows for tasks / issues
Evaluating quality on an ongoing basis
Evaluating technical alignment

7. Product Development Strategy
Automate Ongoing Tasks
Automate testing
Automate deployments
Automate backup and restore
Automate setting up environments
Continuous integration
3 minute saved a day per developer is a full man
month saved per 10 developers in an year

8. Product Development Strategy
Standardize Commonalities
Standardization in behaviors
Standardization in presentation
Standardization in workflows
Standardization in handling events
Minimize customizations in common layers
An extra line of code is an extra line of code you
have to maintain for ever

9. Product Development Strategy
HTML / CSS Level Standardizations
Similar presentation of elements across site
Central and independent definition of styles for
elements
Ability to customize elements globally
Reusable HTML templates for common elements
Style guide for applying CSS classes, HTML
structures

10. Product Development Strategy
Javascript Level Standardizations
Standard plugins / libraries for handling similar
functionalities
Do not reinvent the wheel - use out of the box
capabilities
Standard bindings
Standard event management
Standard handling of AJAX

11. Product Development Strategy
Interface Level Standardizations
Common presentation approaches
Common popup system
Common notification system
Common validations, messages, errors

12. Product Development Strategy
Functionality Level Standardizations
Similar behavior of elements / features across site
Frameworks / libraries / modules to handle common
functionalities
Standardized workflows
Standardized responses to events
Standardized validations
Standardized messaging systems
Standardized capabilities - export data, print, print
pdf

13. Product Development Strategy
Internationalization and Localization
Build global - Ability to localize
Reach local - Localize interface & content
Handling of strings
Handling of interface (RTL / LTR)
Handling of content
Translatable interfaces

14. Product Development Strategy
Accessibility Considerations
Follow accessibility standards
Build accessible

15. Product Development Strategy
Device Considerations
Mobile first
Device independent capabilities
Device driven presentation

16. Product Development Strategy
Coding Standards
Set in place protocols - use a standard
Automate checks - eg: Coder for Drupal
Document frameworks
Train and on-board new team members

17. Product Development Strategy
Maintaining Documentation
Developers could change
Vendors could change
Business owners could change
Requirements change
Document details of implementation and logic
behind requirements
Document standards and protocols

18. Product Development Strategy
Generalize, Generalize, Generalize
Generalize functionalities
Create reusable components
Create configurable components
Create libraries and common functions

19. Product Development Strategy
Be willing to correct course
If you make a mistake, go back and correct
Maintaining a mistake is going to be costlier in the
long run than fixing it in the short run
Re-factor as required to optimize / fine tune

20. Product Development Strategy
Drupal as a Product Development
Platform
Solid core architecture that is pluggable out of the
box
Comes with extensible application development
framework
Forces developers to follow strict protocols and
coding practices
Leverage existing capabilities in core and
contributed modules
Ease of plugging in new features
Ease of integration with other systems

21. Product Development Strategy
Drupal as a Product Development
Platform
Accessibility
Mobile Ready
Abstracted theming layer
Modular in functionalities
Modular in presentation
Strict coding standards
API for extending and building new

22. Product Development Strategy
About Zyxware Technologies
Building web based products since 2006 based on
Drupal
Worked with startups, and mature businesses in
building, launching and maintaining products
Contributes to Drupal extensively. 30+ modules and
themes used by more than 50000 sites.
Over 150 Drupal projects delivered across US, UK,
Europe, Middle East and Australia

23. Product Development Strategy
References & Credits
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/
b8/Seattle_library_framework_inside.jpg
http://www.drupal.org

24. Product Development Strategy
Contact Us
Check us out at http://www.zyxware.com
Mail us at partners@zyxware.com
Like us at http://www.facebook.com/zyxware
Follow us at http://www.twitter.com/zyxware
Connect with us at
http://www.linkedin.com/companies/zyxware-
technologies