Crush a Product Launch with Your Product Management Framework
The perfect product launch is an elusive beast. As the launch date nears, the pressure mounts while the product manager deals with last-minute changes, bugs infesting the Jira board, and some network or server issue that threatens to ruin everything. You might have the perfect product management framework, yet the journey to the finish line is usually anything but elegant.
Whether you're launching a new product or releasing a new feature, product managers thrive on the excitement, exhilaration — and exhaustion! -— that come with the job, particularly surrounding significant releases. Even with careful planning, an exquisite product roadmap, and a neatly refined backlog, the final moments before launch always seem to end in a fight to the finish.
Before you place all the blame on your product management framework, or worse, your product team (Nah, you would never do that!), take a step back and breathe. We’ll walk through some ideas on how you can relieve some of the chaos on launch day. (Let's be honest, no drama on launch day would be just a little disappointing.)
Pre-launch planning
If you're using an agile product development methodology like Scrum or Kanban, you're already ahead of the game in terms of planning. Experienced PMs will have a roadmap with t-shirt sized epics and stories carefully laid out using established prioritization methods.
Based on your product strategy, you may choose to release new product features to production after each iteration. But sometimes, the product marketing plan requires a bigger splash. In this case, you can take advantage of press releases, major advertising events, or other high-visibility marketing opportunities.
Planning how you intend to release the product is as important as deciding what will be part of the release. Product development teams need to coordinate with product marketing to consider the following:
- Will you do a soft launch to a limited audience?
- Do you need to pre-release specific components to test pricing, marketing copy, or usability?
- Will you leave pre-releases in the wild until launch, or will you test for a specific time period and then pull them back?
- Do you have a hard date on which you must release (ex., Super Bowl Sunday), or is there some flexibility in the timing?
Answers to these questions drive the release strategy, which is then factored into your release plan and execution.
When it comes to determining what features to include in your product launch, you can choose from a variety of product management frameworks or use a hybrid approach and mix and match the methodologies to fit your situation.
The Kano model, AARRR (acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue) theory, and OKRs (objectives and key results) all provide product management frameworks. These help product owners plan feature releases that align with the product vision and realize profitability objectives.
Remember: It's always a good idea to have a Plan B or even a Plan C to allow for unexpected events or issues that tend to rear their heads just before a launch. Atlassian has a great product launch template to get you started if you're working on your first release.
Launch day planning
A launch day checklist is your best friend on launch day. You might even want or need more than one list. A product launch has too many moving parts across too many teams for you to rely on memory alone. Your marketing, IT, and product teams will all play a role in the launch, performing necessary activities for their roles.
Particularly if this might be the first product launch in your startup, checklists help product teams think through details with clear heads well before launch day. The best plan is to ask each team to create their checklist and then meet as a group to align and coordinate each task's timing. Some launch day tasks are independent, ready to be tackled at any time. In contrast, others will be more time-sensitive or dependent on something else happening.
For teams with a few launches under your belt, these checklists hold the lessons learned from prior releases and, when updated after each launch, turn your team into a smooth-as-silk, product-launching machine.
Post-launch planning
As you know, a product launch is not the end game. Once the dust settles and everyone has gotten some sleep, you need to measure how the product performs. Planning how to measure the product’s initial key metrics allows product managers to communicate results to stakeholders early and as often as necessary.
Measuring key product metrics after a launch validates your decision-making of the product features, confirms you built the right product for the market, and helps you ask and answer the right questions when planning more feature builds and marketing strategies.
Important key product indicators following the launch can include total sales, top attribution channels, activation stats, and affinity sales. If you're launching a new feature within an existing product, you'll also want to keep an eye on retention numbers. A spike in churn rates could indicate a problem with the user experience or the underlying technology solution.
Beyond measuring the results of your release, you'll also need to prepare what's next. After your development team gets some shut-eye, they'll come back to work looking for their next assignment. You'll need to have your backlog ready for the next sprint planning ceremony, and then, it's back to business as usual. There may also be some immediate customer feedback that needs to be actioned.
Once you get your team off and running toward the next release, it’s time to take a look at your roadmap. You’ll likely discover new information when customers start using your new product or feature. It’s a good idea to leave some room in the roadmap to take on work discovered during the first few weeks of your launch.
Then there’s one last thing — CELEBRATE!! You and your team worked hard and accomplished something really cool! It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind toward the next release. Take some time to pat yourselves on the back for a job well done.
Use your product management framework to tackle launch day like a rock star
With some planning and flexibility, you can set up your product team to make launch day look like a walk in the park. And the sooner you get good at this, the better. You'll always be launching something throughout the product lifecycle, from the initial MVP to new features to the end-of-life process.
Thorough roadmapping gets you off to a solid start, and as you get closer to launch day, you'll build out more of the critical details to ensure you don't miss anything. Cross-team coordination is essential, and checklists help open communication channels and get the entire team on the same page.
Early reporting on results builds confidence with stakeholders and is also a great way to show your team the results of their efforts.
Enjoy the adrenaline rush of launch day, but try to eliminate a little of the chaos and stress. As soon as you've launched, it's time to move on to the next thing. That's the nature of product development, and that's why we love it.
Related Articles
Agile Best PracticeHow To Avoid These 5 Agile Planning Mistakes
Agile planning is a critical phase of the agile process, as it determines the team’s priorities and sets the tone for the work to come. The planning process helps agile software development and other product development teams sort through new information, adapt to roadblocks, and address evolving customer needs.
Agile is an iterative process that helps teams reduce waste and maximize efficiency for the ultimate goal of bringing value to customers. This customer-first approach helps teams make informed choices throughout the development process — choices that continually and consistently provide value to stakeholders.
It’s the opposite of traditional project planning, which takes a step-by-step waterfall approach. For many years, the method dominated project planning with detailed plans laid out at the beginning of a project that had to be adhered to rigidly. This may move a project or product forward, but it neglects to account for any new developments that could occur outside of the “master plan.”
And what about stakeholders? The best part of the agile process is that stakeholders can be brought in at every turn. You don’t need to guess whether or not you’re making the right decisions — you can find out every step of the way by directly including stakeholders in your process. You can adapt your plan as you need to based on what will provide the most value to customers at any time.
Yet, even if you are part of a seasoned agile team, there are still hiccups to overcome and processes to finetune. This post will outline some unproductive agile planning mistakes teams make, including how agile teams can avoid these common pitfalls.
Agile Planning Mistake #1: Not being on the same page as stakeholders
Do you involve stakeholders in your planning process? Do they understand your goals and why you are making each decision? Working directly with stakeholders will help you gain a clear view of what your customers need and want to determine what should be done when.
Never assume you’re on the same page as your stakeholders. They live in a different world than the one you are deeply embedded in, and they may not have the same experience with the agile process, your planning methods, or the agile tools your team uses.
Ensure you never make commitments the team can’t keep. What you thought would provide the most value during the planning phase could be completely different a couple of weeks later.
In order to produce deliverables that meet stakeholder expectations, you need to agree on what those expectations are. Involve your stakeholders in planning, but ensure everyone understands that expectations could evolve throughout the process based on new information gained from successes, failures, and customer responses.
Agile Planning Mistake #2: Using bland, flat product maps
Flat product backlogs are bland and boring 😴. Think carrot cake without icing. They lack the detail and functionality needed to realize the full story of your product backlog.
Plus, once you have more than a handful of items, they become overwhelming and difficult to organize in a meaningful way. It becomes less clear which item is the most important and more difficult to ensure your decisions align with the larger goal of the project.
When you plan out your roadmap, it needs context, and you must be able to clearly see the customer journey. User story maps visualize the customer journey in the planning process and throughout the entire process of product development. They utilize user stories — the smallest unit of work that can bring value to the customer — so you can plan and organize the backlog from the customer’s perspective.
📕 Read our ultimate guide to user story maps to learn more.
Easy Agile TeamRhythm transforms your flat product backlog into an impactful visual tool. Product owners and team members can plan core user activities, manage epics inside the story map, order user stories by priority, and edit story summaries — all while integrating directly with your Jira agile boards.
Agile Planning Mistake #3: Not allowing the plan to live, breathe, and adapt
Agile methodology is an iterative approach. This means your agile planning needs to leave room for changes. Your plan should be able to grow and adapt as you progress with each sprint or product roadmap.
At the beginning of a sprint, you lack the information needed to see the full picture. You don’t have everything you need to build the perfect solution, and that’s okay. It’s all part of the process. Spending hours or days trying to iron out the perfect plan just wastes time that could be better spent learning and solving problems as they come.
You may need to alter your plan after a roadblock comes up in a daily stand-up, or you may learn about a customer concern that completely changes your direction. Iterations are inevitable and welcomed! They help you keep pace with incoming information as you learn from each other, stakeholders, and your customers.
Agile planning isn’t a promise. It’s an outline that will help you reach your goal, and that changes with your goals and circumstances.
Agile Planning Mistake #4: Not incorporating retrospective insights in the following planning session
Retrospectives are an essential piece of the agile process. They give teams a chance to reflect on everything that occurred in an individual sprint or after the completion of a product.
An effective retrospective asks the entire team key questions that can improve the process next time around. What went well? What’s worth repeating again? What didn’t go so well? What could be improved upon next time? What roadblocks or dependencies developed? What did you learn? How did you feel at the end of the sprint?
A retrospective provides insights that will improve efficiency, teamwork and team dynamics, the effectiveness of tools, and communication with stakeholders.
Simply holding a retrospective or collecting retrospective feedback is not enough to gain value. You need to ensure you’re incorporating the feedback into the following sprint planning meeting. The next iteration will be all the better for the time you spend reflecting and improving based upon what you learned.
Agile Planning Mistake #5: Choosing tools that don’t take a customer-centric approach
Whether your team uses a Scrum process, kanban boards, or agile methods, the tools you choose should always be customer-focused. And you need to continue using them in a way that keeps the customer at the forefront of decision making.
Teams can fall into a trap believing they’re focusing on the customer when they aren’t doing much of anything beyond following simple agile methods and generic processes. Customers need to be embedded in your development process right from the planning phase so that every decision a team member makes considers customer needs first.
Choose planning tools that help your entire team get to the heart of what makes your customers tick, and always check in to ensure you are making decisions in line with your customers.
For example, Personas provide a deep understanding of what customers want, need, don’t want, etc. They reveal key information about customer pain points, desires, demographics, goals, shopping patterns, and much more. We highly suggest developing customer Personas to get a rich picture of all the people who will use your product, but it’s not enough to just have Personas lying around.
You need to bring these Personas into your agile planning process and keep them front and center as you complete issues and continue to develop your product.
Easy Agile Personas for Jira helps you create and store Personas within Jira, so you can plan based on customer needs in real-time. The tool will help you empathize with customers in order to make decisions that provide the most value to users at any moment. All of our Easy Agile Jira plugins are customer-focused and designed to keep the customer top-of-mind throughout the product development process.
Learn more on the Easy Agile blog
There’s plenty more where this came from. Easy Agile is dedicated to helping teams work better using agile. We make simple, collaborative, customer-focused plugins for Jira.
We regularly publish lists of tools, advice articles, and how-to guides for agile teams. If you work with Jira, you’ll find our resources are especially helpful in navigating the ins and outs of product development and the Jira plugins that will improve the way your team collaborates.
ProductEasy Agile Roadmaps: How To Create a Product Roadmap Template
Roadmaps help agile teams produce great products. They’re iterative, visual, collaborative, and they can be created directly in Jira. We designed the simplest roadmapping tool for Jira to bring the benefits of roadmaps straight to agile development teams. Use the Easy Agile Roadmaps app to create product roadmap templates that are simple to use, flexible, and integrated directly within Jira.
In a previous post, we shared a quick guide on how to create a Jira roadmap using Easy Agile Roadmaps. If you haven’t used Easy Agile Roadmaps yet, start there to install a free 30-day evaluation and create a product roadmap in Jira.
This post will cover some of the key features of our app, including how to synchronize your roadmap, schedule work from your backlog onto the timeline, create theme swimlanes, and visualize key date milestones.
The benefits of roadmapping
Roadmaps are extremely useful. Here are just a few of the things they can do:
- Provide a big picture vision for agile teams
- Provide a visual summary of the product development process
- Communicate strategic initiatives and business objectives
- Allow for real-time iterations
- Provide a clear time frame to keep product strategy on track
- Ensure short-term goals are met as soon as possible while still keeping an eye on long-term goals
- Help product managers oversee and organize product releases
- Track important release dates and product launches
- Keep everyone up-to-date on broader business goals
- Illustrate both a detailed and high-level overview of deliverables
- Help product managers and team members see dependencies between issues
- Help development teams bring constant value to external stakeholders
Plus, when you create a Jira roadmap, you have quick access to your product plans, and you always know exactly where your roadmap lives — right in our app. No more chasing down Gantt Charts or looking for one-off PowerPoint presentations!
Easy Agile Roadmaps: configuration, themes, markers, and PDF export
We designed the simplest and most flexible roadmapping tool for Jira to help agile teams work better together. Easy Agile Roadmaps create a flexible, iterative, and easy-to-use visual timeline of product development, allowing product owners to sequence the most critical features for customer delivery.
Watch our demo or follow the instructions below to:
- Synchronize Jira start and due date fields
- Schedule issues on the timeline
- Add swimlane themes
- Configure version and date markers
- Export the roadmap as a PDF
Synchronize Jira start and due date fields
We require users to specify which date fields should be mapped directly to the roadmap for a synchronized roadmapping experience. You’ll need to choose your date fields since multiple custom date fields may exist, such as project start and end dates or contract start and end dates.
A Jira administrator is required to map date fields.
Navigate to the Jira administrative cog and click “Manage apps” from the dropdown menu. Down the left-hand side of the manage apps page, find “Easy Agile Roadmaps,” and click configuration. Here, you can select the desired date field.
In each dropdown menu, you will see all of the available date fields to choose from on your Jira instance. Next, ensure that both of those date fields are associated with the screens used by your product teams.
Once installed, Easy Agile Roadmaps can be found in the project sidebar for every Scrum and Kanban agile board. Clicking on the roadmap icon in the project sidebar will load your roadmap for your selected board. From the dropdown menu in the top right corner, you have the option to view your roadmap from a weekly, monthly, or quarterly timeline scale.
Schedule issues on the timeline
After loading your roadmap, two theme swimlanes are present on the roadmap. The first is an example roadmap titled “My theme” that can be renamed. The second is a swimlane called “issues without themes.” Any issues populated within your selected date fields will appear on the timeline in a swimlane titled “issues without themes,” located at the bottom of your roadmap.
You can use the drag-and-drop functionality to move any issue to a different theme or place it on the timeline.
Issues from your board that have not been populated with start and due date fields can be added to your roadmap from the issues panel. Click on the blue “Issues” button in the top right corner of the roadmap, and simply drag an issue from the panel onto the timeline to schedule it on your roadmap.
Issues can be resized to show their expected start date, duration, and end date. To resize an issue, drag the left or right end to the desired date.
Create swimlane themes
You can slice your roadmap using theme swimlanes. These are a flexible way of grouping work and dividing the roadmap into a more visually digestible format. Theme swimlanes can represent anything suitable for your business context, from distinct themes of work to project components. Examples of themes include health and safety, customer onboarding experience, or customer satisfaction and engagement.
To create a new themed swimlane, click the “Create Theme” button located at the top of your roadmap. Name your theme, and press “Submit.” Your new theme will appear above the issues without themes swimlane and can be reordered using the arrows to the right-hand side of its name.
Configure version and date markers
Use Markers to visualize key date milestones and Jira fix versions on your roadmap.
To add Jira fix versions to your timeline, select the “Markers” button from the top of the roadmap. Click “Add Marker” to the fix versions you want to add to your roadmap.
Date markers are a flexible way of representing milestones or events, such as conferences, beta periods, or marketing campaign launches. To create a date marker, select the “Markers” button from the top of the roadmap. Select the option “Add a Date Marker.” Name your date marker or milestone, set the start and end date, and choose the marker color. Use color to signify different types of events and to add another layer of visual organization to your roadmap.
Export the roadmap as a PDF
The roadmap can be exported as a PDF to share with users and stakeholders who don't have access to Jira. To export your roadmap, click on the ellipses menu and select “Export to PDF.”
Select the timeframe you would like to share using the start and end date options, then press “Export.”
Product roadmap template example
Below is an example product roadmap template made with Easy Agile Roadmaps. The roadmap shows product launch dates, events, and overdue tasks with vertical colored Markers. Issues are arranged and scheduled by date in themed swimlanes that further organize the roadmap.
Easy Agile Roadmaps are completely customizable, so you can establish a process that works best for your team and your stakeholders.
How to get the most out of a product roadmap
✅ Utilize swimlane themes to tell a story about the customer journey. Ensure swimlane themes are customer-focused, so you always have their needs top-of-mind.
✅ Think of the roadmap as a living document. It will continue to evolve based on the needs of your team and stakeholders.
✅ Ensure the roadmap is accessible to all stakeholders so that they understand what’s going on and why you are making each decision. If necessary, regularly export the roadmap as a PDF for stakeholders who can’t access Jira to ensure organizational alignment.
✅ Actively collaborate with stakeholders, and involve them in the entire process. This will give you a clear understanding of what work will bring the most value to customers.
We dig deeper and expand on these guiding principles in our Product Roadmap Guide.
Try Easy Agile Roadmaps free for 30 days
Product roadmaps are widely used by agile teams since they simplify product goals and planning with a visual representation of the product journey.
Easy Agile Roadmaps help teams align around a product vision to continually bring value to customers. Complete a product roadmap so you can impress your team and stakeholders before ever making a commitment. Start your 30-day free trial to see what a difference this can make in your process.
If you have additional questions, ask us for an on-demand demo, which covers the features outlined in this post. Or, contact our team at any time with specific questions about any of our Easy Agile apps.
Workflow7 Product Launch Planning Strategies for Development Teams
Simply developing a product doesn’t mean it’ll be a success. Plenty of elements determine how well a product is received — and a lot of that begins with product launch planning.
How will you unveil your product to the world? Who will be able to access your product when it first launches? What features do you need for the product's initial development, and what features should be saved for further down the road? How do you make sure everything is ready in time for the launch date you’re hoping for?
Product launch planning melds your development strategy and your sales and marketing strategy to ensure every department works together and aligns on key goals. It’s a whirlwind of a race to the finish line, but it’s also an exciting time for product developers. How will your product be received? What will customers and stakeholders think?
In this post, we discuss seven key strategies for successful product launch planning. Time for takeoff! 🚀
1. Set clear goals and define what success looks like
Set clear objectives and be realistic about what you hope to accomplish. Setting lofty, unattainable goals will distract from what matters most, and it can lead to disappointment, lack of motivation, and reduced morale.
Be clear about who on the product team is responsible for what and ensure team members outside of product development, including sales teams and marketing teams, are involved in product launch planning.
How will you go to market? What do you hope to accomplish with your launch? What product launch planning needs to happen before you can move forward? What pre-launch deliverables are critical to moving development forward? What roadblocks could prevent your success?
When you understand what you are trying to accomplish, it’s easier to tell when you’re successful. Don’t leave anything open-ended so that everyone on the team knows what you’re working toward and how to get there.
2. Get to know your audience
Great products are developed when customer needs are at the forefront of decision making. No matter what stage of product launch planning you’re in, you should always keep the customer journey top of mind. Consider how each decision you make brings value to your customers.
Customer personas describe important details about a target audience, such as pain points, behavioral patterns, demographics, goals, and buying habits. Deeply understanding who you are building a product for and what they need is vital to a successful product and a successful product launch.
Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports user story mapping, helping teams empathize with customers so that development and launch decisions can be made based on what will provide the most value to your target market.
3. Gather feedback and test, test, test
Test, test, test! We can’t say this enough. You need to continually test, ask questions, and gather market research.
Get your product in front of stakeholders and customers frequently to gather feedback along the way. The more you learn as you develop your product, the more issues you will sort out as you go, and the better the project will be in the end.
The testing process will also give you a deeper insight into what your users are looking for, so you can better meet customer needs. How do they interact with the product? What issues arise? What questions do they have? Do they understand how to use it? What features are they looking for?
Gather as much feedback as possible so you can continually improve the product leading up to the launch. Bring your stakeholders and customers into your process to better understand their needs and how you can provide consistent value.
4. Use comprehensive tools to track product launch planning
Product launch planning is a complex process with many moving parts, team members, and deadlines. Having the right tools is essential to the success of the launch. The whole team needs to be able to see what is planned, what is expected, and how each piece leading up to the launch is connected.
Establish a clear product launch plan template that guides the team forward. Backtrack from the desired launch date to create a launch timeline that recognizes everything that needs to get done before the product is put out into the world.
A product launch roadmap is an effective tool for tracking your progress. Roadmaps help teams align their vision, keep track of specific product launch dates, and provide a clear visual of the most critical prioritizations.
Learn how to create a product roadmap template with Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira. They help teams align around a product vision and launch strategy to continually bring value to customers.
5. Focus on an initial great product, not features
Focus on your minimum viable product first. This is your top development priority before launching — no matter how tempting other fancy features may be.
Fancy features may be appealing, but they could slow down development, add unnecessary stress on the team, and cause unwelcome issues right before you’re supposed to launch your product. Put in the work to develop a product that meets stakeholder needs and delights customers. If this goes well, there will be plenty of opportunities to zero in on other features down the road.
6. Expect the unexpected
No matter how much feedback you gather and how many tests you run, there are always surprises when it comes to launching a new product. Launch day may not go as smoothly as you hoped. It’s okay if things don’t go exactly as you expected, so long as you’ve prepared for these possibilities and can adjust.
Extensive product launch planning will help you navigate surprises. It also helps to practice the motions beforehand. Give yourself time before the new product launch to review and practice the steps that need to play out. Rehearse your process to smooth out as many possible hiccups as you can. The extra time you spend running through the motions will also help ease the nerves of the team members involved in the launch process.
7. Hold a retrospective after the launch
After all is said and done, there’s still one more important step to your product launch planning. A retrospective helps teams examine the launch strategy and how everything played out. What went well? What didn’t go so well? And what can be learned from the process?
Even if you won’t launch another product any time soon, a post-launch retrospective is a great opportunity to learn from your experience. You can take these insights and success metrics into account when launching future features or other products down the road. Plus, it gives the team a chance to debrief after launch activities conclude.
Let’s recap those strategies one more time:
1. Set clear goals and define what success looks like.
2. Get to know your audience.
3. Gather feedback and test, test, test.
4. Use comprehensive tools to track product launch planning.
5. Focus on an initial great product, not features.
6. Expect the unexpected.
7. Hold a retrospective after the launch.
Learn more on the Easy Agile blog
There’s more where this came from. We’re dedicated to helping teams work better using agile tools and practices. We make simple, collaborative, customer-focused plugins for Jira, and we regularly publish articles on strategies, agile information, and how-to guides for product managers and agile teams.
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