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We have been working for a while on building a product for our clients and now it has reached a stage where we need to decide whether we are ready to go to market with it or not. One of the tasks which would enable us make that decision is to come up with an quality assessment of the product vis-a-vis some of leading products in the market.

What I have already started is (after identifying the target products) is to make a list of functional/non-functional features; on which all products are to be rated. A high level assessement of the quality is also on the list which would mean to drive these products through some of the critical use cases we have and prepare a report.

I would like to know whether anyone has already done this kind of work and what approaches would work best in such a case.

4 Answers 4

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IMHO the approach used here seems quite backwards (you built a product then you want to compare against competitor products).

If you think you can build a better mouse trap, then you

  • start by baselining the existing/competitor's mouse trap
  • then identify key areas that are critical to customers
  • and finally design and develop a product the excels in those (and possibly more) areas
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Product Testing.

Achieve product superiority over competitive products by continuously improve product performance and customer satisfaction. Also Monitor the potential threat levels posed by competitive products to understand competitive strengths and weaknesses. You can also have an eye on Cost-reduce product formulations maintaining product superiority. Implicitly measure the effects of performance/quality. Provide guidance to research and development in creating new products or upgrading existing products based on your learning. Monitor product quality from different people through proper channels. You should also be good in predicting customer acceptance of new products.

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Based on my understanding. When to refer quality I assume aspects are feature comparision in terms of usability, performance, security aspects of the application.

  • From end user perspective compare usability features of the product

  • Technical perspective - Platforms supported, Operating Systems, Browsers supported, web servers supported, databases supported, After sales Product technical support, Ease of Deployment and maintenance

  • From Implementation perspective - Programming Languages the product support for feature enhancements, feasiblity of migration from existing product, effort required for migration

  • For Performance perspective - How does both applications perform for same loads, User response during peak loads, run load tests and check

Other aspects to check

  • Cost Perspective - How applications caters to small/medium/enterprise versions in terms of cost and licensing aspects

You can provide little more details on the application, domain it caters for detailed analysis. Typically when you compare multiple databases. When you visit each product site they would have provided comparision with other competitive products.

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I would find out what differentiates my company's product in the market. What makes the product stand out amongst the other leading products? How is it unique and what are it's advantages and disadvantages compared to the competitors.

If the product doesn't have any key differentiators you may want to suggest a functionality that would help make it stand out. Also focus on bringing a good user experience.

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