How many iterations does it take to get to a successful product?

Like the owl in that Tootsie Roll commercial, you can either make it a thousand, or you make it in three quick bites.

When you iterate, you can bring value to your product, but there are always potential issues hidden in the past.

Iterations are vital for the creation of great products. It’s very hard to get it right the first time, and I don’t know any product that has truly been commercialized the first run.

There are three types of stages that cause you to iterate: ideas, sensory, and manufacturing.

Ideas

Ideas are simply mockups or concepts that get the job done. Marketing asks for a concept, you create a very simple version of it. In general, when you create a proof of concept, it should use minimal ingredients and can be created in your kitchen (unless the product is a very resource intensive piece of work).

The goal is to prove feasibility. For a keto bar, could you just make a bar with coconut oil and almond meal? Perhaps, you can try it.

Nutritionally, you just have to be in the ballpark. I would argue a proof of concept that is 20% off of the target is good enough.

The big reason for casting an easy and wide net for proof of concepts is because it is a lot easier to make a simple concept more complex than making a complex product more simple. Once the proof of concept has been approved, really hound your marketing folks to give you a written down, concrete goal post such as nutritionals and function, so you can start refining the idea.

Sensory

Once you’ve refined the proof of concept, now it’s time to give these concepts to other people. People who will eat your product, more specifically. In general, humans are more of the same than unique when it comes to eating foods they like. This is especially true when you test within your target market. You will get a much different response testing your plant-based burger to vegetarians than meat eaters but both results are still valid.

Whether you do a hedonic scale, or a duo-trio, the sensory data you get from your target market can refine your product to taste even better.

In general, you can get away with just scoring taste. For example, you are in the right ballpark when 80% of your target market likes your product over the other product. You can go more specific and rate levels of salt or sugar, but from my observation, that data is not as valuable as taste.

If you have a lot of money and a sensory expert, yes, get as much data as you can so you can improve your product the best you can. If you have no resources, the main priority of any product is that it has to taste really good.

Manufacturing

Most novice product developers can create a spectacular product but once they run it through a machine and everything breaks, it’s back to the drawing board.

Transitioning from bench top to scale is a very valuable skillset because you could save thousands of dollars a run by just knowing what works and what doesn’t.

This is why it’s very important for a product developer to talk to the plant to understand the machinery.

There is also a philosophy I preach in terms of making your product robust. When I mean robust, it means that it can survive a lot of punishment and still look and taste good. Can the production worker accidentally put too much vanilla extract into the formula? Can the product survive another 2 minutes of mixing? Can the product handle temperatures a few degrees higher or lower than intended? These are all questions that need to be considered for bench top.

Since all food forms are different, it is vital that you communicate with your manufacturer about the machines being used and also ask what type of bars can be ran. If you can, ask for some white label formulas that they run all the time. Asking for this will save you a lot of time and money.

Bureaucratic Issues

Here are a few issues that are frustratingly out of your control when creating products.

Moving the Goal Post

Over the course of a project’s lifetime, the purpose of a product can change. A new trend, panicked marketers, the fun stuff.

You might have heard this:

“just make your keto whey bar vegan”

“Turn that shake into a supplement”

“We want an RTD version of this product”

This is probably one of the biggest factors in what can ruin good products. It is very important that as a product developer, you might need to start from scratch and convince management to make this a separate product.

Who are the stakeholders?

Sometimes iterations are necessary when the person who is in charge of throwing money at you is asking for it. The big issue is that most of the time, the stakeholders don’t understand the product in the first place.

In a few projects, I’ve had ego driven stakeholders who will force iterations just because they don’t want to be proven wrong. The unfortunate aspect is that you as a developer can’t really do anything about it.

It becomes increasingly frustrating when the ego driven stakeholder does not understand that it is the customer who decides on the right iteration, not them. Oh, if the product fails, it’s your fault. Keep that in mind.

The moral of the story here is to really pick your battles when it comes to listening who is telling you what to iterate. If you’re just getting paid a steady paycheck, don’t become attached to this product. There are other products that need your attention, and sometimes, you can create great products without having someone’s ego in the way.

If this happens in every single one of your projects, consider leaving as the product development culture is tainted.

How to Get Better at Iterating

Iterating has diminishing returns the more you do it but every product has a specific number of times before the product becomes a shadow of what it’s supposed to be. Iterating too much wastes time, resources, and the biggest issue is that you bloat your product with so many changes.

There is a ton of nuance on when to iterate and when to say “it’s fine, people like it”. In most situations, done is better than perfect because the consumer thinks done is perfect.

The best way to iterate better is ironically through experience, which well, requires that you iterate! But what has helped me is asking people who are experts for help.

In the food industry, every ingredient you order has an expert behind it. Every machine has an expert behind it. Your job as a product developer is not just combining the best ingredients to make the best product, but it’s also about combining the knowledge of the best people so you can be the best product developer.