It’s the date of a big product launch, and one big question hangs in the air: Will your team’s hard work be a hit — or a flop?
Even after careful roadmapping, research, iteration and collaboration, there’s no guarantee every new feature will wow users. It’s the moment of truth for all, and according to Alison Connard, vice president of product monetization at Dailymotion, it’s not uncommon for a product teams’ vision to not quite hit the mark.
“Often, what you think might be the ‘perfect’ product differs from what the customer views as the ‘perfect’ product,” Connard said. “That’s why it’s important to be realistic about what you can achieve within the timeline, understand the impact of each feature or component and take an iterative approach.”
Otherwise, things could get messy.
Fortunately, there are practices product leaders can employ to avoid complications on launch day and beyond. To find out the secrets behind an effective product launch, Built In NYC connected with Connard and Eric Edelman, vice president of product at Common. They shed some light on how they prepare their teams for success when finally releasing the culmination of their work to the world.
What Common is building: Common creates stress-free living arrangements through tech-enabled property management. Renters can dwell in shared living spaces, microunits and traditional apartments in over 10 cities in the United States — each with enviable amenities and an emphasis on streamlined management.
What’s one key step you take early on in the product development process to set your team up for a smooth and successful launch?
When building products, we really try to create alignment on the product strategy and launch process across the organization. For our most recent major product milestone, we launched a new hybrid property management system that integrates our proprietary marketing and leasing tools with a third-party property accounting system, Entrata. The goal was to create a best-of-both-worlds platform that would allow us to operate buildings efficiently and push the frontier of proptech innovation. The new property management system we built is a major step in our mission to take the pain out of the property management industry and make renting a pleasant experience.
As an organization, we’ve learned that the most successful product launches happen when stakeholders get a chance to clearly express their requirements early on in the planning process, and everyone knows the launch plan in advance. Launches always involve dealing with the unknown, so over-communicating is key. At Common, we like setting up “war rooms” where everyone involved in the launch can easily coordinate and, as a result, stay on the same page.
How do you balance the desire to build the “perfect” product with the need to hit deadlines and get a product to market as quickly as possible?
We like to use the impact-effort framework for thinking about product development. How much work is required to build this thing and how will it make a difference for our business? We constantly grapple with these questions when it comes to optimizing our website for conversion and brand appeal.
For example, when we launch a chatbot on a new page, there’s an impulse to spend lots of time perfecting the aesthetics. But our research shows the biggest lift comes from just getting the darn feature live. In those cases, it’s important to know when “good enough” is good enough for the v.0 version.
Your launch day is just one step in the process of releasing and stabilizing a new feature or product.”
What’s a crucial lesson you’ve learned about product launches over the years? How do you apply that lesson in your current work?
One of the keys to a successful launch is ensuring that the team doesn’t view the work as being done the day the product launches. Your launch day is just one step in the process of releasing and stabilizing a new feature or product.
Typically with a big launch, a lot of product work still needs to be done after you ship. For big launches at Common, we always dedicate engineering resources to launch support and bug fixes, while the product managers document what went right and what could be improved. This process helps us quickly shore up weaknesses, further develop the long-term roadmap, and improve our launch skills for subsequent launches.
What Dailymotion is building: There’s a lot going on in the world, and staying in the loop on music, entertainment, sports and news can feel like a full-time job. To keep up, over 350 million users turn to Dailymotion, a global streaming service that offers curated video content presented by a thoughtful algorithm.
What’s one key step you take early on in the product development process to set your team up for a smooth and successful launch?
Build a clearly defined project plan that will be reviewed with project team members as well as stakeholders. The project plan should be kept updated throughout the development process to ensure alignment across the organization and to ensure goals are met. The plan should restate the business case and objective, and include key deliverables, owners, dependencies, KPIs and, of course, deadlines.
Depending on the size of the feature, a successful launch can rely on many different teams. It’s important to ensure all stakeholders understand what’s expected from them and when, and how success is measured. At this stage, it’s also important to identify whether a formal rollout is required. For smaller features, a simple QA process will be sufficient. However, for large-scale features, you may need a progressive rollout, monitoring and roll-back plan, in the event of an issue.
The best and most innovative features can fall flat if they’re not rolled out effectively. A strong project plan will help ensure a successful launch end to end.
How do you balance the desire to build the “perfect” product with the need to hit deadlines and get a product to market as quickly as possible?
The most important thing is to first understand the problem you’re trying to solve, who the customer is and what the customers’ needs are. Often, what you think might be the “perfect” product differs from what the customer views as the “perfect” product. That’s why it’s important to be realistic about what you can achieve within the timeline, understand the impact of each feature or component and take an iterative approach.
When presented with a tight deadline, it’s often useful to outline the possible scenarios, pros and cons of each approach, risks, benefits for the customer and associated level of effort. This might result in the decision to build an MVP (minimum viable product) first. You need to ask yourself, “If we can’t include this in the product scope, will my customer still be satisfied, achieve their goals and come back for more?” If the answer is yes, you might want to start with an MVP. From there, you can evaluate the product success with data and customer feedback to better identify what else is required to enhance the product.
You can’t expect all launches to be smooth sailing, but if you have solid communication and goals, you are well-equipped to achieve a successful launch.”
Anything can happen when a new product is released. How does your team prepare for the unknown and ensure unexpected issues don't derail the success of a product launch?
Unforeseen issues are inevitable. We work in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment, where many people are working on multiple projects concurrently. With so many competing priorities and tight deadlines, it can leave little time and resources to fix last-minute issues. In this type of environment, you need to have a solid foundation of alignment and communication across the team. This creates a focused and committed team that is working toward a common goal, and can act quickly and effectively when something goes wrong.
Additionally, it’s important to have well-defined, realistic and achievable goals that allow time for the unexpected. These are more specific goals created throughout the development process, outside of overall product goals and KPIs. For example, if you’re working in a two-week sprint cycle, you might want to create a specific goal for each team member at the end of the sprint. This will help to ensure you’re tracking toward the deadline and can adjust scope if necessary. You can’t expect all launches to be smooth sailing, but if you have solid communication and goals, you are well-equipped to achieve a successful launch.
