News
5
min read
June 10, 2024
Launch the right feature, every time
Launching new features is what gets product teams up in the morning. The strategy, the craft, and the vision coming together in a nicely packaged feature. That’s the dream.
At an early stage startup, each feature brings you closer to product market fit.
But let’s be real. It hardly ever goes that way. Sometimes you ship a feature that you’re forced to (ahem CEOs/VP of Sales/Customer Success). Sometimes you ship something to copy a competitor.
Intention aside, you’re still going to have to ship something as a product manager. There is so much content written on this topic. All of it focused on the process of launching something
What happens after? Are users actually using it? Are they complaining? Are there bugs or new feature requests? How do you figure out if you should continue investing into the feature? Did it bring you closer to product market fit?
Launching a feature is 70% of the battle. The magic is in the other 30%. Average product teams give up after the launch. The truly great product teams go the last mile.
Let’s breakdown what the best product teams do after launch.
1. They care more about the post-launch more than the launch
Think back to your last feature launch. You likely spent a lot of effort getting the feature on the roadmap, crafting PRD, working with design team to flush out the UX/UI, and getting engineering aligned. You may have also worked with product marketing to make sure people know about it once its out there.
There likely wasn’t much that happened after that. The best way to avoid this is to plan for the post launch experience as much as the pre-launch side of things.
That means you should have a plan in place to answer the following questions after launch:
What is the data saying?
What are users saying?
What do I need to do next?
It doesn’t have to be science here (product management rarely is). What’s important here is you understand the importance of understanding post launch impact.
2. They operate to make a decision
After every launch you have 3 possible actions you can take. 90% of teams by default do the same thing.
It’s easy to guess what most teams end up doing. There is nothing wrong with doing nothing. As long as you understand why it might be the best thing in your situation. If its the default because you never planned to make a decision, then its likely not the optimal outcome.
Given this understanding that you need to make a decision, your goal post launch is to get to this answer as quickly as possible.
3. They stick to the process
Ultimately, this all comes down to following a process you can apply across each feature launch.
Most teams will typically care about the following as the first pass report card for a feature launch. It provides the right balance between information you can act on and the time it takes to put it together.
You can look at way more based on your data maturity and comfort.
What does the data say?
What do users say?
Once you have the quantitative data, its time to figure out the feedback from users directly post launch. Look at support tickets, call recordings, and any other unstructured sources of data relating to user feedback that you can get your hands on.
Look at users who have used or attempted to use this feature. Right now its more important to understand their thoughts on the feature, not around the discoverability of it.
The key things to focus on here is:
Why are people complaining about
What is working well
It is extremely important to summarize, group and categorize all feedback. If you paste in raw tickets or transcripts, it will get overwhelming and end up being missed.
And just do it consistently.
Congrats you've now shed the title of an average product manager.
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