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Custom Software is No Longer a Project- It's a Product. Here's What That Means for Enterprises
Posted By
naxtre
Published Date
24-09-2025
Focus Here for 10 Minutes: Moving from project-based development to development for impact and value to the business – custom software development is slowly turning towards creating engaging and valuable outcomes for users. This opinion article explores the details of this shift – why it is happening, why we need to shift, potential outcomes, and every step you need to take from your business. We will discuss authentic feature development, development based on feedback, and most importantly, how to be a great usability leader. We will talk about software products with a product-led focus and focus on scalability. Let’s go!
In a highly contextual discussion with the CEO of Blossom, Thomas Schranz, he noted, “Some companies think of software development as an engineering management challenge. Some people think of software development as a product management challenge. Great companies manage Engineering. Great companies managerial Product.”
A comment from 2015, which is very relevant today, a decade later!
Custom software development which was 100% focused on scope and deadlines, has slowly changed to focus on value and impact. It's now not just about 'build fast and scale smart'. It's 'solve the problem, write the code, and build with intent'.
Present-day trends in a personal software product aren't just all about custom technology features. It requires:
- Exceptional concentration on the end-user, informing EVERY functional and design decision with the user in mind.
- Constructing more streamlined and user-friendly methods of achieving significant business results.
- Creating with positivity - always innovating, testing, adjusting.
- Fueling validated feedback cycles with material prototypes and mock-ups of the solution.
This isn't just a typical blog post with hot facts and statistics. This opinion piece comes from careful research in the industry, real-life experience developing and knowledge, and extensive experience in custom software development services. It will serve as a guide for creating and re-thinking custom software as we embark on a paradigm shift in thinking, directed toward businesses and technology service providers - a candid and unedited point of view.
The Project Mindset vs the Product Mindset – What is Holding Old-School Custom Software Development Back?
This isn't really about how you build software. Treating custom software as a product instead of a business process is really about your business model or approach to the business. You are focused on a one-time sale, not a relationship!
This is the change in thought I mentioned!
The difference here would be the technology context we are in. Traditional linear and project driven methodologies to customs software development work well in a defined-scope context. At this stage, requirements would be bribed, timelines would be created, budgets allocated, and teams formed to build something somewhere and in a steady state environment – the secret sauce of why software product fails!
However, in today's fast transformational development context, market conditions and user expectations are evolving at the speed of now. Technology is changing constantly. This is why the linear approach to the software development is a failure and miserable!
Embracing the project mindset today means:
- Large scope, rigid and non-innovative.
- Limiting focus to adoption, usability, or practical ROI pathways.
- Misalignment from business objectives to results
- Building software that ensures a specification matches but does not consider the user experience.
- Flawed feedback systems
- No agency of control at the post-launch stage.
A project driven approach puts you on the verge of delivering outdated, unused, and misaligned software solutions.
Shifting Focus of Narrative by Practicing Product-centric Software Development – What Changes?
Custom software development for businesses emphasizes establishing a lasting brand presence. This is always more than a one-time transaction. The transition away from product-centric to partnership-centric product will eventually become important as a company.
At this moment, you can't pursue traditional product thinking metrics, either for speedy adoption or viral growth of your product/service. You will much rather get through your first couple years - with being of genuine technology value to your user's community, and in return, they will clearly see the value enough to replenish annually.
Your focus would alter fundamentally in favor of:
- User-centric engagement instead of meeting due dates - ask yourself and the entire company things like "How will my user interact with this feature?"
- A method of managing an agile software lifecycle, iterative development, and ongoing product development with user feedback, was through the process of product collaboration.
- Engaging security teams throughout the total development of code, engaging user experience design, development, marketing, and other accountability measures.
- Creating real software solutions that adapt quickly, scale projects at a manageable pace, and create a lasting impact by reframing improper practices out of presence.
Methods for Continued Value Creation with Agile and DevOps
⦁ Design need-focused designs with a practical fact-based understanding of how your software product works in its environment.
⦁ Encourage multi-tier engagement (end users to executives and C-suite level) to gain diverse perspectives on value and challenges.
⦁ Leverage data-informed decision-making for greater understanding of our customer's industry trends, business challenges, and regulatory landscape.
⦁ Develop rapid prototypes and MVPs to receive feedback more quickly and improve CI/CD processes.
⦁ Utilize collaboration of the sales and customer success teams to get even better insights that may not be gleaned through usage data.
Developing a Product-Centric Mindset – How Does it Benefit Organizations?
Running a software development strategy for organizations is like navigating an oil tanker – complex, larger in scope, and requires a solid steering influence.
As Optimizely Co-Founder Pete Koomen explained, "When you are creating a product for a person, you are helping that individual solve a problem." When you build for an organization, you are helping them create a way to solve the problem.
In building enterprise software solutions, you will pay attention to the user experience but also to the business results. The more clearly you can understand your owners' value challenges, the more quickly you can obtain results from that product. One single feature addition or change in data modelling can lead enterprise clients to completely rethink their workflows – The stakes are significantly higher!
How can Business and IT executives enable this transformation?
If you are directing an organization that plans to custom build technology and software solutions, this guide is for you!
You have a larger role to play than you might think. Your software partner will develop the central product from your business insights and objectives.
I have led enterprise software modernization projects with organizations of all sizes and complexities. The winning teams had leadership who moved from managing timelines to leading a solid product vision.
This included:
- Investing in deep user research and innovation, preparing enterprise data to support tech evolution.
- Treating user pain points as results and finding out the exact challenges to define clear product vision.
- Empowering and enhancing cross-platform teams so that the software provider has beyond-data insights.
- Lead continuous project investment and deriving value from the investment by optimizing resource allocation based on strategic value, adoption figures and product performance.
- Building customer obsession in your teams, removing silos, promoting collaboration and pivoting product ownership.
Blair Reeves and Benjamin Gaines, in their book "Building Products for Enterprises," state: "Marketing can only create narratives and stories about our product that resonate with customers and users alike if it achieves full visibility of the customer."
This type of user understanding is necessary for achieving success in enterprise product management in custom software.
Now, let’s revisit the benefits of the product-led development strategy.
Think of Software as a long-term investment – It Has Important Business Value.
According to Gartner, more than 85% of companies have embraced or are embracing the software product delivery model because it is a flexible method for digital business transformation.
Leading companies, like Google, Apple, and Slack, have made the shift, improved the customer experience, nurtured user loyalty, and continue to push for this transition.
Benefits you can receive:
- Easily managed modular technology structures that can adapt to your business needs in order to reduce technical debt.
- Security as part of design - not just a remedy, for proactive risk management and compliance.
- Ongoing improvements through collaborative functions and accountability.
- Reliable value-driven investment for product viability and business outcomes.
- Improved cost efficiencies via almost precise forecasts, appropriate resource allocation, and reliance upon the vendor is diminished.
- Improved ROI monitoring through actionable metrics and tangible product metrics.
- Improved flexibility, agility, and service delivery through Agile DevOps.
- Improved team collaboration to speed up delivery and launch.
- Improved software reliability through constant monitoring and acceptance of feedback.
Establishing a Product-Focused Delivery Framework: Essential Components for Development
- An effective software product isn’t built from a list, it requires a solid strategy. Based on my experience in transforming business processes with technology, I have identified several factors that have contributed to the success of our custom software projects for businesses in various sectors.
- CI/CD pipelines enabling frequent releases focus on substantial interaction with users, enhancing engagement and establishing an emotional bond.
- Enhancements to core feature launches should rely on genuine user data and insights gathered from teams that interact with customers.
- Efficient governance – incorporating not only AI-driven and automated processes but also focusing on quality standards, aligning business objectives with delivery, compliance frameworks, etc.
- Security, scalability, system robustness, and compliance integration from the initial line of code.
Real World Uses of Product-Directed Custom Software Development
I could provide you with various case studies from Google, but there are plenty of examples there. But this commentary is based on my experiences using product roadmaps for custom software, so I'd like to share those experiences instead.
Case Study 1: Custom eCommerce LMS Reduced Customer Inquiry Response Times to under 24 hours
The Challenge: Riley LLC., an HVACR company based in the USA, was looking for a full solution that integrated an LMS with an eCommerce site. Their main challenge was to link these sites together, enable data security, enhance content management through intuitive designs, and enhance their performance.
The Solution: We worked with them to build their solution with nopCommerce, built SSO-based authentications, and automated service management, and they had very positive outcomes.
The Outcome: The client said that they were receiving over 1000 unique visitors every day, and they decreased the time it took to fulfill service requests to under 24 hours. They reported climbing a score in customer satisfaction of over 15 points as well.
Custom solutions created with a product lens provide a new level of efficiency.
Here's another.
Case Study 2: Customized eLearning Software Improved Course Completion Rates
The Problem: An educational institution based in Yemen was working to enhance digital learning in rural areas of Yemen. He indicated that students in rural areas often had outdated devices and inconsistent internet access. He also indicated students lost interest in online learning and the elevated course drop-out rate was evidence of this loss of interest.
The Solution: My client wanted a platform that could run on lower bandwidth levels, would run on weaker devices, whatever would also keep the learners engaged with the digital environment. We employed an iterative development process using VB.NET, ASP.NET, HTML5, C#, and CSS3 technologies to develop a sophisticated educational software.
The Takeaway: The custom LMS had a 17X increase in students, produced 20K+ new certifications, and had over 65% of students complete courses.
Is Custom Software Development Driven by Products the Right Approach for You?
In user-centered software development, a product is much more than an aggregate of a set of features, it is specifically addressing critical business challenges. You can't convert value proposition to engaging user experience. So, if you do truly need to pursue a product approach, you can't then go custom development.
When should you assess your software development methodology:
- You notice stunted innovation during your development iterations.
- You’re either slow to respond to market changes, or you don’t respond at all.
- Your software delivery is slow and does not fit the business objectives.
When can you tell you’re stuck in the project mindset:
- The lack of collaboration for your teams leads to less customer/business data and information.
- There's typically no iterative releases, and usage comments gets little consideration until the next update or new version.
- You do not have the budget for continual evolution because all money is earmarked for a defined “end release”.
- Your software was deployed without collaborative deployment support, and there is no ownership whatsoever.
- Your customers are demanding more customized experiences with faster solutions.
- You've signed up for digital transformation that demands software to scale out.
A business expansion, merger, or acquisition requires a software application architecture that can scale up.
Things to think about - Run a Readiness Evaluation:
- Do we see software as a deliverable that changes over time?
- Is our organization’s culture built on innovation and experimentation?
- Do my resources have faith in sustained product-focused thinking?
- Are our systems prepared to facilitate CI/CD?
Do not view the readiness audit as a routine. View it as an element of your product strategy to facilitate the shift toward a product-first approach.
In what manner does Naxtre help businesses develop software that is product-centric?
Working in a complex business environment demands constant attention - at times putting the individual needs of a user to address the needs of the business itself at a higher level. This necessitates empathy at scale - meeting the business challenge for not just an individual user but for the larger ecosystem.
I've led product lifecycles for customized software products of various customers for Naxtre. Each project owned its own level of scale and industry. However, to produce success, it relied on a deliberate understanding of the customer ecosystem. Not only did this help us foster collaboration across departments, but it also assured that results were aligned with the highest-level business impacts.
A brief explanation of our processes? Happy to share:
With over twenty years of business experience, we are uniquely qualified to develop in accordance with expectations related to customer experience, operational needs, and regulations in the USA. While we are a company committed to ISO 27001, 9001, and SOC 2, we also adhere to strict data privacy and security regulations including GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and CCPA.
- We build in Agile DevOps, focus on user-centered designs, and iterate your development process to deliver more flexible solutions, quicker releases and faster adoption.
- We can deliver full software development service capabilities with certified resources available to hire, creating full support throughout the experience. We also offer you a realistic view of your solutions through rapid prototypes and MVPs.
- We are leading the way in development of software powered in artificial intelligence; in effect we enable your business data to leverage and drive technological innovation for your operations. All decisions are data backed; every line of code from day one is secured.
- Not only do we continue to have meaningful partnerships in our industry, but we also appreciate the partnerships we develop with our clients. For us, every transaction is a feeling, and we create long-lasting partnerships as opposed to short-term transactions.
- We do an excellent job putting our heads together to create solutions for you to own the software products with the submission of a source code.
- We have an impressive portfolio of transformation of top custom products across 30 industries.
- "Our process started in 2022." Since then, Naxtre has been growing and adapting our approach to software development and building the right teams focused on our long-term goals," said Benjamin, a C-level executive of a reputable FDA compliance assistance organization.
Are you looking to make your users the focus of your decision-making process? The Product strategy for customized software development means something to you!
Developing a software product for business is truly a collaborative endeavor. It requires an unusual blend of research and creativity, stakeholder management skills, technical knowledge, the ability to adapt to changing requirements, and, most importantly, a high degree of client process understanding.
At Naxtre, we accentuate sustainable value instead of returns. We help you with multi-month selling cycles and complex stake holder dynamics while being integrated with your IT environments. If you are looking for the same expertise with your product development journey, connect with us today and we will develop the software your users will want to depend on!
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