Product companies face many challenges, but the need to reduce time-to-market typically stands above them all. If you are not yet working on solving this issue, we invite you to read this blog post to understand the matter.
What is Time-to-Market and Why Reduce It
Time-to-market (TTM) is a metric that defines the time required for a product team to take a product or its part from a formulated idea to the moment when that product or part becomes available to customers in the market. In other words, it is the time needed to implement product ideas.
Companies sometimes measure TTM for iterations, sometimes for products, depending on their product portfolio. Some calculate the average TTM, while others evaluate the absolute TTM for each product to compare with competitors — it depends on the strategy.
When you have a formulated product or feature idea, here are the stages you must go through before the product becomes available:
- Discovery — defining the technologies and parameters for creating the future product, drawing mockups, and conducting analytics.
- Delivery — developing the product and testing its quality.
- Marketing — launching the product into production and onto the market.
Read: How to Conduct Tech Product Launch to Attract Maximum Attention?
Reducing time-to-market allows you to lower development costs, increase the speed of bringing new features or products to market, and gain a competitive advantage. A new iPhone is released every year — and this TTM is also part of the brand’s sales strategy. If you manage to stabilize time-to-market, you gain a predictable business and strengthen your market position. No matter how you look at it, reducing time-to-market is necessary. But how?
Classic Methods You Can Use to Reduce Time-to-Market
Here are traditional tools and methods to reduce time-to-market and stabilize its duration.
1. Agile Development Methodology
This includes an iterative development approach where you release frequently and refine functionality later, as well as project management using Scrum (short sprints) or Kanban (visualizing progress at every stage).
2. Minimum Viable Product
Instead of perfecting a product or feature, you first launch a basic version with key functions to test demand and collect user feedback, which then turns into a backlog of improvements. Enhance feedback collection with A/B testing on focus groups.
3. Parallel Processes
If feasible, running marketing in parallel with development and testing helps reduce time-to-market.
Read: Who Is Product Owner, And When To Hire Them?
4. Code and Module Reusability
In reality, the urge to write custom code instead of using ready-made solutions is irrational in most cases. Use libraries, code samples, and best practices, adapting them to your needs. If you understand the architecture you need, adapting existing solutions will be easier. Consider modular architecture.
5. Minimizing Bureaucracy
Fewer approvals and more decision-making within small teams!
6. Process Automation
This is why we’re here. Proper implementation of DevOps, CI/CD, release automation, and other processes — from business analysis to launch marketing — will significantly accelerate your time-to-market.
Using Automation to Reduce Time-to-Market
Tracking time-to-market has another crucial aspect — it helps you understand whether your team’s estimates and expectations are accurate. This becomes especially evident when you focus on reducing time-to-market through automation.
Automation itself works like this: you need to break down your manual processes into building blocks, systematize them, and delegate them to machines. If your processes are weak, automation will initially slow them down. “Initially” can last two months, a year, or even longer, making optimization essential.
Process Automation Scenario for Reducing Time-to-Market
1. Idea and Planning
The goal of automation at this stage is the rapid formation of product concepts and priorities.
Today, you can automate market analytics (trend collection, competitive analysis, demand forecasting) using AI tools. Implement automated project management systems (Jira, Trello, Asana) with AI-driven task prioritization.
Additionally, consider using AI-powered text summarization tools. This is an unconventional approach, but think about how many texts your team exchanges — long emails, Confluence pages, market reports. All of this needs to be read, consuming time. Integrating automatic text summarization tools will speed up workflow.
2. Development
The goal of automation at this stage is to minimize routine tasks and accelerate code writing and testing.
Implement DevOps processes using CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins) to automate deployment. Docker and Kubernetes provide containerization and scalability.
AI tools speed up coding, and built-in IDE features automatically analyze and format code.
3. Testing
The goal of automation at this stage is to eliminate errors early without slowing down the process.
Unit and integration tests can be fully automated using Jest, JUnit, PyTest, and Mocha. For UI testing, use Selenium, Cypress, or Playwright; for API testing — Postman, Newman, or RestAssured.
4. Deployment and Maintenance
The goal of automation at this stage is to quickly roll out new product versions with minimal risks.
Terraform, Ansible, and Puppet automate infrastructure deployment. Canary releases and feature flags (LaunchDarkly, Unleash) allow testing changes on a limited group of users.
Monitoring systems (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack) automatically track errors, while AI analytics (Datadog, New Relic) instantly detect and resolve issues.
5. Marketing and Sales
The goal of automation here is to accelerate demand generation and increase reach.
AI tools (ChatGPT, Jasper) automatically create content, while marketing analytics (Google Analytics 4, Amplitude) identify effective promotion channels.
Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager automate ad campaigns, while email marketing services (HubSpot, Mailchimp) use AI personalization to boost conversions.
6. Feedback and Improvement
The goal of automation is to quickly collect and analyze user experience data.
AI tools (MonkeyLearn, Qualtrics) automatically analyze user feedback, Google Optimize and Optimizely facilitate A/B testing, and feedback platforms (Intercom, Drift) provide instant customer support.
Potential Results of Automation
- Product launch time is reduced by up to 40%.
- The impact of human factors on routine processes is minimized.
- Bottlenecks in development and marketing are eliminated through automation.
Adapt this scenario to your company’s specific conditions.
We hope this material has helped you understand how to reduce time-to-market. If you are looking for additional resources for your product team, JetSoftPro is always happy to help.
