From idea to delivered product, step by step.
A practical, engineering-grounded guide to taking a physical product from a first idea all the way to a shipped, selling reality.
This wiki breaks product development into ten stages and more than ninety activities, in the order a real project meets them. It is written for people learning how products actually get made: founders, students, and engineers who want the whole path laid out, not just the part they already know. The tone is practical over theoretical, and every activity is shown working on a real UK product build, so you see the method applied rather than described.
The ten stages
Each stage links to its hub, where every activity in that stage is listed. Read them in order for the full journey, or jump to the stage you are stuck on.
How to use it
Three ways in, depending on where you are:
Start to finish. Work the stages in order. Each one builds on the last, and the running example carries through, so the whole product-development arc makes sense as a single story.
Dip in. Stuck on pricing, a spec, an FMEA? Go straight to that activity. Each article stands on its own and points to what comes before and after.
Follow the worked example. One real product runs through the wiki end to end, so you can watch a single idea travel all ten stages and see how each decision shapes the next.
What every article gives you
This is the standard every page in the wiki is held to. Whatever activity you open, you should find:
A plain definition: what the activity is, in plain English, with no jargon to decode.
A worked example: the activity done on a real product, not a generic template you still have to fill in.
Common mistakes: what tends to go wrong, set against the better move.
A checklist you can run: the practical steps as a tick-list you work straight through.
Project notes: a real case study from a UK product build, carried through the whole wiki.
Where it fits: how the activity connects to the ones before and after, on the 10-stage map.
If a page does not give you these, it is not finished. The promise is the wiki’s; the onus is on each article to keep it.
Try it yourself
The fastest way to feel how the method works is to run the first stage on your own idea. The free Viability Sprint walks you through it in about 15 minutes and gives you an honest read on whether the idea is worth the next step.
The story you can follow
▸ From the notebook · the running example
The proofing box, stage by stage
One real product runs through every article in the wiki. Follow it and you watch a single idea travel all ten stages.
4 min read · the thread through the whole wiki
Every article’s Project notes follows the same build: a heated sourdough proofing box, made by a husband-and-wife team in Stockport, that has to hold 26°C to within half a degree overnight, in food-safe ceramic, with no app, at £149. It is a real-shaped product with real constraints, not a tidy example invented to make a point.
Read the notes in order and you watch one idea travel the whole framework. The Viability Sprint kills the over-clever connected version and reframes it as a box that simply holds a temperature. Discover and Define narrow the buyer and lock the specification. Engineer makes it real and safe, the FMEA puts an independent thermal cutoff on the heater, and the prototypes prove the half-degree in a cardboard rig before a penny is spent on ceramic. Manufacture sets up the kiln and the assembly line, and Deliver launches it through a direct store and the baking-school world, then listens to what comes back.
It is a deliberately ordinary product, which is the point: the method is what carries it, not a flash of genius. Each decision is made on real numbers and real limits, and each one shapes the next. Follow the proofing box from the first rough sketch to a product shipping to bakers, and the whole arc of taking something from idea to delivery reads as one story rather than ten separate lessons.
— Begin at Stage 01 → Idea