Reduce Time to Market: 11 Ways to Speed Up Product Development

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Key takeaways

• The reduced time to market helps businesses quickly validate the concept and market fit and gain a competitive advantage.
• You can speed up time to market with a good strategy, properly organized process, automation of routine processes, use of BaaS solutions, etc.
• 89% of companies have adopted or are preparing to adopt digital-first strategies to accelerate their market entry.
• Minimum valuable product (MVP) lets companies quickly release a product with essential characteristics, get user feedback, and make the necessary improvements.

If you plan to launch a new product, a faster time to market has a critical impact. But what is time to market? The timeline begins with the emergence of the idea and ends when your product reaches its audience. The good thing is that you can boost this process and leave competitors behind.

We will provide you with nine tips on how to reduce time to market and cross the finish line first in this race. Our research is primarily based on Acropolium’s experience in accelerated workflow for the sake of the product’s best hit.

We have been developing and optimizing bespoke software for various industries and company sizes for over 20 years. Three of our startups have grown into unicorns, and four of our clients are on the Fortune 500 list. And today, we want to share our insights, as well as the experience of a rapidly developing shipping service platform, a location-based social network app, and an accounting software solution.

What Is Speed to Market, and Why Should You Care?

Time to market meaning can’t be overrated. 89% of companies have implemented or are planning to adopt digital-first strategies to enter the market faster, the global tech transformation market is seeing dramatic growth. Moreover, 69% of them recognize it as a key factor in enhancing operational efficiency.

Fast product development gives you an advantage over competitors and a better awareness of the manufacturing pace. Effective time management and controlling all stages of development directly lead to improving marketing strategy. Rapid and well-planned TTM can be a determining factor.

In addition, your team will be more aware of what and when they need to do it. They will improve their performance, discard redundancy, and focus on key goals. A fast and well-organized workflow will help increase margin earnings and lower the risk of late release. Thus, by 2026, global spending on digital transformation is set to hit around $3.4 trillion.

Types of Product Development Time to Market

After the speed to market definition, let’s discuss the approaches to accelerate the initial stages of development.

Full-Speed Development

The release of apps and other digital products isn’t expected to take much time. The full-speed development TTM is about passing all stages as fast as possible. To do this, startups build an MVP or a prototype of the product, which helps them get user feedback and adapt the product immediately.

Agility Boost

Applying this method for improving time to market will let you use changes and be flexible in development without postponing the release. This approach enables the company to establish a clear connection with the audience and implement the necessary changes to the product as soon as the feedback arrives. Unlike MVP, this method is suitable for any business field.

Certain Scheduling

Many products are set to be released on a certain day. It could be beneficial for marketing campaigns planned for a specific time. Such a strategy helps to avoid stressful haste and the possible mistakes made for this reason. Instead, you can set a clear schedule and strictly follow it.

Resource-Centered Approaches

You may choose to work with individual skilled specialists, each of them has to complete their part before moving on to the next stage. The other way is to hire a team of professionals. This approach ensures that each part of the workflow will be completed under any circumstances. A team working together on the project is ready to make joint decisions and perform various tasks simultaneously.

Predictability

When a project calls for stability and low risk, predictability becomes key. This time-to-market approach focuses on planning ahead, minimizing surprises, and keeping development aligned with predefined goals. It’s ideal for industries with strict compliance requirements or for teams that value detailed roadmaps and steady progress.

While it may take a bit longer than fast-track models, it offers peace of mind, consistent delivery, and fewer unexpected detours along the way.

Key Benefits of Faster Time to Market

Speeding up product development isn’t about getting things done quicker. It’s about making smarter, more strategic moves that pay off in the long run. Let’s take a look at the key advantages that come with reduced time to market.

Increased Competitive Edge and Market Share

Bringing your product to market ahead of competitors means you get a head start on capturing attention and building a customer base. The faster you launch, the more room you have to shape the market. Plus, early visibility makes it easier to position your brand as a leader in the innovation niche.

Lower Research and Development Expenses

The longer a product stays in development, the more it costs. If you speed up time to market, your teams will be able make quicker decisions, and avoid unnecessary spending on extended testing or revisions. Consequently, streamlined workflows will help you make better use of both time and budget.

Strengthened Brand Reputation

Fast and efficient delivery signals that your company is proactive and innovative. Customers and partners take notice when you consistently meet deadlines and stay ahead of trends, which can boost trust and long-term brand recognition. A reputation for reliability can also open doors to new partnerships and investment opportunities.

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

Getting a product into users’ hands faster equals gathering real feedback and improving it more proactively. This responsiveness helps create a better overall experience and shows customers that their needs are a priority. The quicker you respond to demand, the more loyal your customer base becomes.

Maximized Revenue Potential

Fast product development and early launch leads to generating revenue sooner. Additionally, with more time in the market, your product has a better chance to gain traction, increase sales, and ultimately deliver stronger returns. It also allows room for iterative updates that can create new revenue streams over time.

6 Tips to Improve Speed to Market

How to improve time to market? Here are six ways to speed up your Time to Market and make delivering your product to the users more result-driven and less stressful.

Verify Product’s Viability with MVP

MVP is one of the ways to accelerate time to market and study the needs of your audience. A Minimum Viable Product is the initial version of your product that includes only basic features. It is represented to the target audience and receives feedback before the official release.

At this stage, having the right technical partner — like Acropolium — can make it easier to move quickly without losing sight of quality. The sooner you launch the MVP, the better. It will give you opportunities to improve or completely change your product, and improve the decisions made during the discovery phase.

And to speed up the process even more, use a low code option.

Employ No-Code/Low-Code Platforms

If you’re looking to speed things up without relying entirely on developers, no-code and low-code tools can make that happen. These platforms reduce time to market by allowing users to build apps visually, using ready-made components and templates.

They’re especially helpful for early-stage products or internal systems where fast delivery matters more than complex functionality. By lowering the technical barrier, they let businesses test, adapt, and iterate quicker, often with fewer resources involved.

With experience in a wide range of platforms, Acropolium can step in to guide you on a reliable way to save dev time without sacrificing product quality.

Streamline Development with Cross-platform Solutions

When building for multiple platforms, development time can double or even triple, especially for enterprise-level apps. Cross-platform frameworks solve this problem by letting you write one codebase and deploy it across iOS, Android, and web.

This approach cuts down on duplication, simplifies maintenance, and keeps releases aligned. Teams can dedicate more time for feature development and testing instead of juggling platform-specific issues.

Use Automation and Integration

Automation is one of the factors leading to a faster time to market. Where human error can cause problems, integrating AI technology has become a lifeline. It unloads the employees working on the project and solves problems people would waste time on. You can use automation to perform frequently repeated and routine tasks. It helps to manage the basic cycles of product development.

Integration is another way to shorten time to market. Even one small project at the very beginning of its development may contain large amounts of data constantly increasing. To avoid confusion and constant verifications within the team, create one place to integrate and store it in an up-to-date condition.

Acropolium often supports teams by implementing automation tools and streamlined integrations that make collaboration and scaling a lot easier.

Try BaaS Solutions

Integrating BaaS solutions is one of the most efficient ways to reduce time to market for digital products and deliver them to the market. Backend-as-a-Service is a cloud-based system that enables your team to primarily focus on creativity and the very production.

Constant partnership with a BaaS provider is particularly beneficial for those who regularly launch new products and constantly need a great tech stack to reduce TTM. It’s inefficient to make your team deal with tasks related to the existing products, such as marketing and sales campaigns. It’s much more convenient and, as a result, more profitable to involve BaaS solutions.

Consider Software Development Outsourcing

IT outsourcing can be highly beneficial and save you a few extra weeks, often spent on frequent offline meetings. If you decide to start working with an offshore agency, the time zone difference can boost the workflow. Just make sure you won’t have any communication issues. Not only technical but any other component of product engineering can be outsourced if you have a good strategy for project coordination.

Experts will build a good application architecture using the best front-end and back-end frameworks and serverless solutions for better scalability. With a flexible approach to collaboration, Acropolium can take on entire product builds or just fill in the gaps where your in-house team needs support.

How to Improve Speed to Market: 5 Crucial Steps

From initial planning to final deployment, every step offers opportunities to reduce delays and deliver value sooner. Whether you’re launching a new product or optimizing an existing process, these steps can help bring your solution to market more efficiently and with greater clarity.

1. Build Your Initial Strategy

To increase speed to market efficiently, you should create a good plan and follow it. Reconsider your idea, discuss it with the team and experts, analyze it, and make a final decision. Try to create the first calendar, set key dates and milestones. Calculate the approximate duration of TTM based on statistics and the specifics of your product.

If you are going to develop an innovative product, the most common delays happen because of too complex technical processes that take longer than expected. Remember that at this stage, you need a quick result, not a perfect product. Usually, technical bugs and lack of features can be fixed after the first testing and launch of the prototype.

Finally, be involved. A common mistake is to deviate from the process and expect your team to do the job. Keep every production stage under control, don’t let everything run independently. It is the only way to be aware and promptly respond to emergencies.

2. Set Revenue Goals

Time-to-market duration impacts revenue by simple logic, making it grow if you launch the product sooner. But the trick is that if you try to shorten the development time, it will significantly increase the spending. To keep the situation manageable, set clear limits to your budget. Try to find a balance between the reduced timeline and the budget limits.

One of the ways to speed up time to market consists in setting clear revenue goals and keeping this strategy throughout all stages of TTM. It will help you learn the priorities better and concentrate on the core aspects of development. So instead of adding more functionalities and polishing your product prematurely, invest wisely and increase productivity.

To achieve these goals, consider prototyping and rapid iteration. Create a preliminary product version for testing and feedback, and make timely improvements. Such an approach allows you to quickly identify and solve problems at a lower cost. This way, you can realize market opportunities faster. In addition, it is a great opportunity to reduce the risk that the goods will not be accepted and your budget will simply drain.

3. Organize Your Workflow

For successful project management, use relevant services. The tool will help you organize your team’s performance better. It will provide convenient time-tracking, statistics, faster communication, and interactive boards that allow your staff to follow the plan and meet deadlines.

One of the most effective development methodologies is Agile, which includes Scrum, Kanban, and other models. It involves constant cooperation, feedback, and quick adaptation to changes. It lets you improve the product throughout its lifecycle, ensuring its relevance to the target audience’s needs. As a result, you make progress and get your product to market faster.

4. Improve Data Availability

To see real-time statistics and make data-based decisions, it is essential to improve data accessibility. Create a centralized data repository with all the necessary information — user feedback, market research, team insights, and performance indicators. Visualize reports understandably so all stakeholders stay in the loop about the progress.

Make sure that the information is constantly updated and illustrates the realities. Educate and encourage the team to use this data to make decisions. But at the same time, think carefully about access based on roles, so that users can use only the necessary information.

Such transparency will not only create a comfortable atmosphere but also accelerate the speed product development as participants will be able to cooperate effectively. They will make better decisions and see the impact of their activities on the project.

5. Track Your Results

Tracking results is an integral part of the speed-to-market strategy. Using established key product performance indicators (KPI), stakeholders assess the success of a specific development stage. For example, identify and fix bottlenecks, reducing the risk of failure. Or test hypotheses about the functionality of the product and its characteristics.

There are many KPIs used in product development. These include on-time delivery, efficient use of resources, team speed, etc. Low scores will help you rethink your workflow and adapt it to your team and company needs. Do not hesitate to involve employees in the discussion, because they know the internal processes well.

Acropolium’s Experience

Do you want to reduce time to market by up to 50% and lower your SaaS development costs? Acropolium will provide your company with a backend as a service (BaaS) and consulting on implementation while you focus on other processes.

Our custom solutions with effective architecture allow you to stock data in cloud storage, manage a scalable database, authenticate users, integrate APIs, configure geolocation, push notifications, etc.

And here are the projects we implemented.

Shipping Service Solution

A shipping service provider needed web platform optimization and mobile application development for truck drivers and brokers. Our task was to establish the tracking of the actual number of driver working hours to generate payment for actual work. Also, we should provide a payment guarantee to drivers in case of unforeseen circumstances.

In 3 months, we optimized the platform, making it more advanced and scalable, and presented the MVP of the application for iOS and Android. Now users can track maps and geolocation in real time. It helped increase the security level by 90% and the session speed by 28%.

Dealer Management Software

The development of a modern dealer management system for a heavy equipment software provider was a strategic move. The client needed a fast MVP to streamline operations and replace manual workflows.

Using cloud-based tools, we focused on core business logic and delivered the project in just three months, boosting efficiency by 15%, cutting inventory costs by 13%, and improving customer retention by 25%.

Accounting Software Solution

Acropolium’s dedicated team created a SaaS accounting automation solution with multi-tenant access, connecting various payment methods. Customers can conduct transactions and customize reports and invoice templates, setting up with 5 clicks.

MVP development took only five months. And the project immediately demonstrated its success because the transition rate from the free demo version to the paid plan reached 30%.

Final Words

Time to market is the determining phase of product development. This is when you generate ideas, build the strategy, improve the workflow, and establish project management. If you waste your time on hesitation and distribute your time inefficiently, there’s a considerable risk of being late with the release and losing the advantage over competitors.

To finish on time and achieve the desired result, you must find ways to improve time to market. You should pay attention to development strategy, automate workflow, use Agile methodologies and BaaS solutions, or even consider outsourcing. Setting revenue goals, keeping data accessible, and tracking intermediate results are also crucial. Verify your product’s viability and get the audience’s feedback by building MVP.

Are you about to turn your idea into reality and launch your tech product? We at Acropolium have found solutions for almost two hundred projects in various industries. Our team has extensive expertise at all development stages and delivers it on a subscription basis. Feel free to get in touch and have a deeper consultation on how to speed up product development for the successful launch of your product just in time.

Sources of Information

• Digital Transformation Report — Market US
• Digital Transformation Adoption Survey — Rcademy
• Digital Transformation Market Size — Statista