Product development process: shipping and iteration in startups

Every startup wants to ship faster. But speed alone isn’t the edge. The real advantage is how quickly you can learn and how effectively you can translate that learning into a better product.

That’s where process comes in: not heavyweight rituals or endless planning cycles, but just enough structure to help your team ship, learn, and iterate without losing focus.

So what does a good product development process actually look like in a startup? Let’s break down what matters, what doesn’t, and how to build a rhythm that compounds into real outcomes.

1. Start with the outcome, not the idea

Too many product cycles begin with a feature idea:

• “A customer asked for this.”

• “Our competitor just launched it.”

• “It would be cool if we had this.”

Ideas without context lead to scattered priorities and features that don’t move the needle.

A better approach is to start with the problem:

• Who are we solving for?

• What pain are they experiencing?

• What does success look like for them and for us?

We find it’s good practice to set out the following to help you establish clarity:

• Problem statement – what’s broken today

• Context – user segment, competitive landscape, constraints

• Goal – the outcome we want to see

• Non-goals – what we explicitly won’t solve right now

Brighteye's Product Mentor, Jono Hey, shared:

“A simple user story template helps maintain focus on user benefit: as a user...I want to...So that...”

This simple exercise aligns product, design, and engineering around the “why.” Once that’s clear, the “how” becomes much easier and better trade-offs get made.

Scott Eblen, Brighteye's Product Mentor and VP Product at Monzo, shared:

“Despite best intentions, product teams frequently lose sight of the customer problem. In the middle of a planning cycle a random comment from a founder or investor can send a team down a rabbit hole of thinking about a specific feature and lose track of the underlying 'why'.  Good product teams continually step back to ask ‘what customer problem are we solving for?’ to ensure they don’t lose track of the opportunity. Even if the company is focused on something internally valuable (revenue, operational efficiency) the most impactful opportunities are linked to solving clear customer problems.”

2. Small bets, fast feedback

In early-stage startups, the development process should optimise for learning, not just delivery. Big bets can be risky whilst small bets compound.

How to make small bets work:

• Break work into learning chunks. Ship something that delivers value or insight- but ideally both.

• Bias toward prototypes and MVPs. Don’t spend six weeks building when a clickable Figma flow or concierge test could give the same answer in two days.

• Shorten the feedback loop. Idea → build → ship → learn → iterate. If this loop takes six weeks, you’ll only get ~8 learning cycles a year. If it takes one week, you’ll get ~50. That’s how momentum compounds.

Jono builds on this:

“Creating a design will, in most cases, save you development time. Making it clickable and running some quick tests might save all your development time.”

Before you build, also consider how you will measure improvement after your release...

“If you can't measure the change, you won't know if your work has improved your product.”

Measurement is what turns iteration into progress. Without it, you’re guessing whether your ‘small bets’ are paying off.

Scott adds:

“Finding the balance of speed and meaningful insights is an art. I've seen teams churn out lots of experiments but fail to move the business forward and other teams that take big swings but are too slow. Spend time debating what are the preconditions for success of your product and ruthlessly focus on finding ways to quickly learn about those. Robust discussions on the hypotheses and the minimum viable indication of success are worth the time up front. Don't forget that in the early days of a product, it can be really slow to achieve statistical significance in an experiment so you need to be smart about how to learn quickly”.

3. Define what “done” means, then revisit it

In early teams, “done” is slippery. You launch the MVP and immediately discover four more “must-haves.” Or you ship a beta and it raises ten new questions.

This is normal, but dangerous if unmanaged. Without clarity, “done” becomes a moving target and teams burn out.

Practical guardrails:

• Before building, decide: is this a prototype, a test, or a full release?

• Set expectations internally (and externally) about what’s launching and why.

• Schedule post-launch check-ins (e.g. 2 days, 2 weeks). Ask:

  • What did we learn?

  • What should we double down on?

  • What should we kill?

Jono emphasises the need to be patient before deciding if something is working:

“Many features take time to have an impact - sales cycles, marketing efforts, manual processes - plan a review and be ready for a ‘Phase 2’ before moving on for good.”

The product that wins is rarely built in one go. It’s sculpted, chipped, and reshaped through repeated cycles of launch and feedback.

4. Keep the team close to the impact

Nothing energises a team more than seeing their work land in the real world.

Too many startups push code, post a release note in Slack, and move on. Try not to do that.

Impact rituals:

• Share user reactions - screenshots, quotes, clips.

• Track impact metrics - did activation improve? Did churn drop?

• Bring customer stories into retros - even one delighted user can light up a team.

When teams feel the impact, they build ownership. They remember why their work matters. And future decisions get sharper because everyone is anchored in real user outcomes.

Scott shares:

“Most product teams focus on staying close to the metrics, but tight qualitative feedback is incredibly powerful for bringing that life. I’ve seen some companies do this by building slack integrations so in-product feedback appears immediately in a team’s channel. Others edit down user research so that everyone has access to 3 minutes of customers talking about the product.  These anecdotes can galvanise a team much more than a small shift in metrics”.

5. Build a process that scales with you

Your first product process should be lightweight: a shared Notion doc, weekly planning chats, and clear ownership.

As you grow, you’ll need more scaffolding: sprints, backlogs, quarterly planning. But resist the urge to over-process. Every layer of structure should earn its keep by reducing chaos, not slowing you down.

Guiding principle: Add process only when lack of process is actively causing pain.

This chimes with Scott's view on how to choose which processes to prioritise:

“Don't forget to apply good product development principles to your processes! Start from a clear problem statement, iterate quickly, track metrics and don't forget you can A/B test a process too. For example, ask yourself why you have a roadmapping artefact, roughly measure how much time is spent updating, and try something different next quarter if that isn't good value for effort. Many startups borrow process from established businesses or successful startups which are wholly inappropriate for their current circumstances. Build what's right for you, reflect on whether it's helping, and iterate.”

Your process and culture evolve together. Each iteration not only sharpens the product - it strengthens how the team learns, decides, and delivers.

And remember: shipping ≠ success. What you learn from shipping is what compounds.

Great product development isn’t about raw velocity - it’s about iteration with purpose. It’s about creating a steady, sustainable rhythm where every cycle sharpens the product, strengthens the team, and delivers more value to users.