I'm 35 now, and here is the one and only process I've used in every job: doing research, getting ideas and making them happen. And then iterating until success.

I currently work at Diavo Lab, a company I created, where I spend most of my time crafting iPhone apps.

When it comes to product design, this process is clearly defined: finding a niche, doing thorough user research, defining relevant and suitable concepts, sketching a way to implement them, testing them and then finetuning them until the app is ready to be distributed.

When I have been doing brand or product management in mass market industries, the process was already the same: analyzing sales and consumers data, getting ideas for a brand or a brand extension, setting goals, and developing the best ways to achieve them. The only difference was probably that the testing was far less easy and quick to implement than in the digital world.

Last but not least, as a self-taught developer, the process seems very similar to me when writing code: starting with a precise definition of what needs to be delivered, searching the best languages and libraries to write the code in, devising the software architecture and then implementing it and testing it as often as possible.