What is Product Development?

Taking your product from concept to reality – our team will work with you to specify and design the product, then build it, test it, launch it and iterate it to keep moving your business forward.

We always start with ‘Why?’ – working to understand your reason for developing the product, what you want it to achieve and how it will move your business forwards. We can then help you design the product to achieve these goals, rather than taking a brief from you and executing it.

We know products aren’t just launched and done so we operate a cycle of measurement, feedback and action to keep iteratively moving you forwards.

This is not ‘developers for hire’ this is a full service to specify, design, build, test and launch your product – and ensure it remains aligned with your vision.

What You Can Expect:

  • Taking your product from idea through design, build and test to launch
  • Keeping focus on the big picture whilst nailing the fine detail
  • A team of experts deployed as appropriate across the project
  • Picking the right tech for you - not what we want to work with
  • Clarity on costs and deliverables before any work begins

Our Product Development Includes

Tech Strategy

We’ll carry out a North Star Workshop with you to ensure any product development aligns with your goals and a lowest cost, highest impact approach. We’ll also give you a roadmap to outline our vision for ongoing iteration and how results will be measured. Post-launch, we carry out ongoing reviews to ensure alignment with business goals and your North Star.

  • Tech Strategy

    We’ll carry out a North Star Workshop with you to ensure any product development aligns with your goals and a lowest cost, highest impact approach. We’ll also give you a roadmap to outline our vision for ongoing iteration and how results will be measured. Post-launch, we carry out ongoing reviews to ensure alignment with business goals and your North Star.

Solution Design

As a tech agnostic team we focus on the best tools for your project, not just our favourite. Our goal is to find the best solutions, not just the ones that conveniently mean the most budget for us. You’ll get a detailed, plain English specification document with diagrams, early designs and the pros, cons, fixed costs and timelines of any advised approaches.

  • Solution Design

    As a tech agnostic team we focus on the best tools for your project, not just our favourite. Our goal is to find the best solutions, not just the ones that conveniently mean the most budget for us. You’ll get a detailed, plain English specification document with diagrams, early designs and the pros, cons, fixed costs and timelines of any advised approaches.

Design and Build

We start by translating the specification into wireframe mockups for final review and course correction. We’ll then add your branding and begin development. Progress updates keep you involved at every step, with our whole team adding a range of expertise to each build. Regular code reviews ensure top-notch technical quality is maintained.

  • Design and Build

    We start by translating the specification into wireframe mockups for final review and course correction. We’ll then add your branding and begin development. Progress updates keep you involved at every step, with our whole team adding a range of expertise to each build. Regular code reviews ensure top-notch technical quality is maintained.

Test and Launch

We integrate testing right from the start of a project. Clients can access a regularly updated test plan at any time to guide user testing. All code is tested by the author, reviewed by another developer and then tested by the lead test developer. We use manual, automated, and unit testing. Launch is planned with you, ensuring all aspects are aligned.

  • Test and Launch

    We integrate testing right from the start of a project. Clients can access a regularly updated test plan at any time to guide user testing. All code is tested by the author, reviewed by another developer and then tested by the lead test developer. We use manual, automated, and unit testing. Launch is planned with you, ensuring all aspects are aligned.

How it Works

  1. North Star Workshop

    Getting a deep understanding of your vision, business and challenges

    • More Info

      The North Star Workshop creates a shared vision between you and us, avoiding common project pitfalls caused by misaligned expectations. Clients find it helps you discover new perspectives, risks, and opportunities, and unify your team’s vision.

  2. Specification

    Creating an appropriate solution and documenting it

    • More Info

      The specification takes the output of the North Star Workshop, adding additional detail, validation, and finally a fixed price. We’ll keep revising this document until you’re 100% clear on what you’re getting and that it’s 100% what you need. We know clients like seeing visual wireframes as it helps them give the best feedback, so we include those too.

  3. Development

    Delivering the specification - the ‘actual work’

    • More Info

      All projects benefit from a skilled team who share expertise and conduct peer reviews for consistent results. You’ll have a single point of contact and be able to engage the team directly, seeing progress early and often, with ample opportunities for input and course correction. Our rigorous testing prevents you needing to lead long, drawn out bug hunts during your final review.

  4. Launch and Iterate

    Measure the impact, update the plan, take the next step

    • More Info

      After thorough testing, we’ll launch your product with a detailed checklist covering our technical tasks, like domains and redirects and your operational tasks, like customer communications. We’ll also work with you to create an Improvement Scorecard to track metrics, link feedback to goals, and map out the next steps together.

Ready to talk about your product?

Book a Free Discovery Call

500+
Total Products Built
250k+
Users Supported
20
Years Running
300+
Clients Worked With
200+
Combined years of experience

The Benefits of Product Development

By understanding your vision at the start we’ll be able to help you specify the right product to move your business forward. Then we’ll manage key processes like project panning, code reviews and testing so that you can focus on growing your business instead of trying to manage a tech team.

We know that products aren’t just ‘done’ and our process is deliberately iterative to measure and learn from every action we take, before updating the plan and taking more action. This gives you flexibility whilst retaining control over cost.

  • A critical friend

    Most developers will build exactly what you ask for, if you don’t ask for exactly the right thing then that’s what you get. We’ll push back, challenge and question to ensure you get the right solution for your business goals – even if it means less budget for us!

  • Fixed price - flexible plan

    We’ll define a fixed price and scope for each project up front – with each project as part of a larger roadmap we plan out together. After each project we’ll measure and re-assess before taking the next step.

    This gives you the control over costs you need for your business whilst retaining flexibility.

  • Team of experts

    Instead of hiring a front end developer who ‘does UX’ you’ll have specialists involved at each stage of the project – our UX engineers will design the user interface, our Full Stack Developers will build the database and API, our QA Lead will test it, and out Head of Development will oversee the whole solution.

  • No tie-in

    We know that eventually you will want to take your product in-house and our process is designed to facilitate this from the start.

    We use open source technologies, clearly structure our code and produce appropriate documentation to allow us to hand over to another team.

Our On-Time Guarantee

We’re committed to delivering your project on time. If delays happen due to our scope underestimation, we’ll cover any extra costs, complete the work, and refund 15% of the project costs as a goodwill gesture. We’re a different kind of software development company.
Find Out More

How People Feel About Working With Us

5/5
I just love The Tech Dept. I think they’re brilliant. I love them as people. They are really easy to work with. From a charity POV, a lot of private sector companies take advantage of us. We’re easy pickings. They bamboozle us. It’s really nice to have found a company to work with who are on the same page and have our best interest at heart. It’s never felt like a transactional relationship. More like a long-term partnership.
Helen O’Donnell

Children’s University

5/5
The Tech Dept are aware of the pitfalls and things that can go wrong – they’re grounded in reality. You can count on them because they’ve been through the good, the bad and the ugly
Ali Munro

Flutterlab

5/5
The Tech Dept understands our product and what we’re trying to achieve. We have a great working relationship with them. I like that they’re not too techie. They help us solve the problem simply. 'This is the problem; this is how we do it. There’s no rubbish around the side'. In contrast, other dev agencies need us to spell it out. If we don’t get the explanation exactly right, they don’t get it right. So they build the wrong thing.
Clare Baldwin

QHS (Vaccination Track)

5/5
We needed skilled technical expertise and strategic capabilities to help us deliver a number of complex digital projects. We engaged TTD as our “Plug-In Tech Team”, it worked really well. Their devs, strategists and PM joined our internal team and achieved successful delivery across all projects. They’re a brilliant team and we feel lucky to be working with them.
Pippa Irvine

D&AD

Frequently Asked Questions

  • How do you estimate time / budget?

    We undertake a small, paid specification phase during which we work out the best way to build the project and create a project plan – this allows us to accurately estimate a time and cost.

    This will be based on the amount of work to be done, complexity and if there are any assumptions or unknowns that cannot be clarified before the development starts.

  • How will you keep us in the loop as the project progresses?

    Good communication is crucial to the success of any project – our objective is to answer questions and resolve any issue that might slow progress as quickly as possible.

    Exactly how we communicate will be agreed in the project plan to account for your preferences – As standard we would normally provide a formal weekly update as well as regular show and tells to demonstrate progress and resolve questions.

  • What if we want to change something part way through?

    We’ll discuss it with you, work out if it is any additional work compared to the current scope and what the priority is. 

    For new additions we generally advise putting these into a second release after launch as you can quickly derail timelines by adding extra features – especially before you have customer feedback. 

    For changes, if it doesn’t change the overall scope of the project we’ll incorporate it, if it does we’ll quote the change and you can decide if you want to go ahead.

  • If we work with you now, will you build things in a way that ties us in with you forever?

    Absolutely not – if, for any reason, you reach a point where it no longer makes sense to continue working with us, likely because we’ve helped you to grow revenue enough to take your business into the next league, we can help you transition. We’ll help you set up in-house systems and processes, making sure a newly hired team has everything they need to continue delivering the high standards you will have grown accustomed to.

  • How do you make sure your work is good quality?

    In addition to following industry standards like OWASP, WCAG and best practices for the specific technology we are using (e.g. Cloud Infrastructure setup) we peer review all our work via code reviews and pull requests. 

    On top of this we test all work against the agreed test plan before it is released to you for user testing and sign-off.

    Any tradeoffs that have been made due to time or budget constraints will be clearly communicated to you ahead of time with the pros and cons of the approach.