Building for the Future While Managing the Present

Overcoming Challenges in Defining a New Product Concept while Launching the Prior Release

You are having trouble carving out time to work on your next product release because there are so many loose ends with your current product release.  You know it is important to keep innovating but the days pass quickly with a whirl of go-to-market activities on a major release. How do you break the cycle of today's issues preventing you from building the future?

Product transitions such as launch and kickoff are tricky because there is a lot of change for the product team to absorb.  It is also an opportunity for leaders across the product team to step up!  Here are a few ways to work on the next release without dropping important items in launching the current release:

1. Rapid plan for the next release

2. Banish your lone ranger on the current release

3. Closeout validation issues with the new release

Let's cover how to stay on track with your launch and innovate on the next release.

Rapid Plan for the Next Release

In the build-up to launching a new release, product managers get a lot of interruptions and urgent meetings.  You know your days are going to be chaotic with only small slivers of time free for the next release.  When you get a small block of time free, the first step is to draft your rapid plan for the next release.  By outlining your plan, others can support you and you develop material to get stakeholder support.

The outline of the rapid plan is:

• Description of the release with 3-5 pillars to group the key items in the release

• The market opportunity for the release

• Updated roadmap

• Key challenges

• What is needed to define the requirements

Suppose you are in the midst of launching the 2nd release of your SaaS product while doing the release concept for your 3rd release.  Here is an example of your rapid plan for the 3rd release:

1. The focus of this release is growing the installed base of enterprise customers:

   1. Close feature gaps: automation of deployment and diagnostic APIs

   2. Product growth: extend the freeware version to more developers

   3. Customer feedback: UI improvements and troubleshooting guidelines

2. The market opportunity is extended to larger enterprises

   1. Larger enterprises are a separate segment

   2. Competitors have features to address larger enterprises

   3. Customer feedback is pushing for growth

3. Updated roadmap - grab the current roadmap and add the 3rd release

4. Key challenges list:

   1. Scaling the architecture

   2. Cloud agreement updates

   3. New marketing and Sales focus on larger enterprises

5. What is needed for requirements work - you build this as you go

This rapid plan starts as a list in a presentation deck you fill in when you get those slivers of time.  Since this is your 3rd release you have baseline material from your prior release to modify.  If this is your first release of the product, then you can focus more on describing the customer problem to solve.

Banish the Lone Ranger!

The goal of preparing for a launch is to provide exposure and training to the operational teams on the new release.  If you are doing anything alone for the launch, then you could be inadvertently preventing teams from learning the new release.

Some examples of missed opportunities on the release launch are:

• Presenting the release being launched to sales leads without marketing contributing

• Attending a demo or service validation exercise without including customer success, customer support, and pre-sales teams

• Reviewing draft technical documentation and marketing collateral without coordinating feedback from the rest of the product team

Your goal is to reduce dependencies on your time on the release being launched.  If you do any of the above activities as a lone ranger, then there is no one who can step in when you are executing your rapid plan on the next release!

Close Out Validation Issues with the Next Release

Without sacrificing quality, find ways to close out product validation issues on the next release.  The key steps to close out the issues are:

• Risk assessment and mitigation with a focus on the next release

• Clear documentation of known issues for customers and internal support teams

• New day 0 gaps or gaps that have been present from the beginning are prioritized on the next release

• Log known issues and keep stakeholders involved in handling

These steps are very effective in focusing your time on the next release and getting your operational teams to handle the release that is about to launch.  The outcome is closure on the launching release and prioritization on the next release.

Conclusion

When the inevitable issues arise while launching a new release, you can take steps to free up your time for the next release.  Jumping on the launch problems alone usually hurts progress.   Taking these steps helps the operational teams get familiar with the launch while you prepare the next release:

• Quick outline of your strategy for the next release

• Don't work alone on the release launch

• Wrap up validation efforts gracefully using the new release

Addressing issues in collaboration with the operational teams leads to a well-prepared new concept for your product team.

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