Modern product development in general, and software product development in particular, have adopted end-to-end development principles, in which the conceptualization, market analysis, requirements specification, design, building, testing, release, and post-release support and maintenance are managed as a single, well-documented, cross-functional project.
The first two stages—conceptualization and market analysis—are the most important, because together they define the scope of the solution and thus all of the subsequent steps. Perhaps even more important, they determine whether a project should be pursued at all.
