When is the right time to release your Product?
I have recently had the immense pleasure to talk to Manik Gupta, Corporate Vice President, Teams Consumer, Skype, GroupMe, previously CPO at Uber, and Director Product Manager of Google maps.
Among other things, I asked him what would be the one advice he would give to any aspiring or sitting product manager. His answer was:
❗️❕ “Just get the product out!” ❕❗️
Let’s talk about today!
Product managers are there to deliver value. But I guess it’s more precise to say that product managers are there to bet on actions that will deliver growth of that value in time. We’re not really interested in sudden and temporary bursts of return on our investment. Instead, we’re looking for initiatives that will grow our main metrics on an ongoing basis.
Thus, it is an extremely difficult aspect of the Product Manager’s job to decide on when to release a certain increment/product. Getting something that is full of bugs and hardly works will bury any promising initiative. At the same time, polishing something for months on end will result in growing uncertainty and value loss.
Not to mention that someone may beat you to the punch in the meantime. Reid Hoffman says that if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
Thus it is clearly about finding the right balance!
So how will find it? How to know your product is ready to amaze users and get feedback while not suffering from backlash because of the issues?
Here are some pieces of advice I’d wish to share with you:
🚀 Make sure that the product works. As easy as that! Try to estimate the number of users that will be using it see how easy it is to scale if your success exceeds your expectations, monitor the speed of the product, the number of crashes, and make sure that the technical foundation is very solid. This way, the core offer of the release is not hindered by weak foundations!
☝️ Obviously, start the release with an MVP — Minimum Viable Product. Take lots of time with your team to decide what an MVP for your product is. It may all come down to a landing page that asks for email addresses to see if the problem you want to sort out has a market for it. Of course, you may create something that only solves the problem in an elegant way though there is much more to do to make the experience way better! Different products and scenarios will require different types of MVPs!
🍳 Start with stellar product tracking. It may turn out that your potentially successful product with a great MVP is being held back by a single bug or a single bad UX decision. Just like no plan has ever survived the actual battle with the enemy, you need to adjust the product to your users’ behaviors and react to their needs sprint after sprint.
🎥 If you can do it before the release, make sure to announce your changes. Prepare a promo video or a short tutorial — see what users say and act accordingly. You may even want to invite some of the most eager users to help you test an early version of the release and hear their thoughts.
🙏 Keep your promises. If you’re building some expectations with your users, make sure to deliver on them. Disappointed users will be less likely to look at your work favorably. Their lack of happiness may escalate into the product’s downfall.
😟 However, things happen and sometimes you won’t be able to deliver on your promise. In that case, be transparent and announce the change of the situation as soon as possible with honest reasons on why you had to go back on your word.
I hope this advice will help you successfully launch your increments and products. Such a release is always an exciting time and it will be even more exciting if you know that you’ve done everything right and it’s only up to the users to ultimately confirm your product hypothesis.
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