There are various pain points for product managers and the development team when they launch some new features or a product into the market. For many launchings, a new product seems like a mystery, while for others, the product launch is not a defined process. 

We must empower product people to create repeatable and thoughtful product launch plans to avoid product failures and mishaps during the process. Before unleashing your Voice Assistant on the world, ensure a flawless first impression with a comprehensive launch checklist for speech recognition, functionality, and user experience. You must answer various important questions while formulating your product launch roadmap. How to build a customer-friendly product launch checklist? How can you include the deliverables? How does your product cater to the requirements of the customers, company, and the product team?

Thus, a list of the top 6 tips to build a successful first product launch checklist:

1. Revisit Your Previous Launch Deliverables List 

You can populate the new product launch checklist with various task notions, which need to arise from your end first. It may seem daunting initially, but once you start brainstorming different ideas, and follow those paths, you can build up a workable deliverables list.

If it is your other product launch, you can start the launch checklist through filling in the list from the previous launch deliverables list. What matters the most is that you play with the ideas, build out an exciting list of notions, and share it across the product team for their feedback. 

It is important to remember that every product launch is different, which will allow you to make some tweaks based on your launch goal, product or features launched, target customer personas, and much more.

2. Timely Review Your Launch Checklist 

When you start from the first product development task, it is crucial to schedule every task assigned and completed time. As we know, the different stakeholders involved in the task completion process need supervision and control, and setting expectations for the same is necessary. 

The product task owners and managers must regularly check in with all the stakeholders through weekly meetings, which should prudently set expectations. Also, the involved stakeholders must check off the tasks promptly, without feeling any added pressure. 

3. Select Tasks Which Are Fully Deliverable

The product launch process involves various tasks, which are divided into respective subtasks. The timeline of the subtasks varies, and you need to include only the fully completed subtasks in your launch management. 

This way, you can avoid over-cluttering your launch checklist, as there can be different deliverables from different stakeholders and teams to manage. Double-check encryption protocols, user authentication, and access controls before your software’s first launch for a secure Software Security First Launch Checklist. It also provides ownership and discernment to the person responsible for the task completion in determining the necessary and sufficient deliverables for product success.

4. Create Categories Of Your Launch Into A Playbook

When you have to improve your product launch checklist efficiency, you can create categories of your launches into a playbook format. Though every launch is unique in its own way, some launches may provide resource consumption, other launches can provide opportunities for product engagement and adoption, and some can be a footnote for a specific features list. 

There are a few ways to create playbook of your launches:

• Create categories of the launch into different tiers – Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, etc., based on the amount of effort and resources required. 
• Categorization of launches according to its impact. How does it influence your current customer base? Answering such questions can guide you to the requirements of the launch tasks. 

Irrespective of the choice of launch categorization, the crucial task is to build the playbook for each of them. 

5. Single Ownership For The Launch Deliverables

Owning the launch deliverables and working on the complete process are two different things. For instance, an enablement deck for your marketing team will involve a product marketing team, salespeople, and a select group of marketers for feedback and shaping the product. 

A single owner can responsibly drive the tasks forward, report the progress, and ensure the completion of the tasks on time. It also helps achieve greater accountability among the go-to-market team and brings better efficiency to the launch checklist implementation.

6. Get Feedback On Launch List From All The Launch Stakeholders

Many a time, the product people can feel overwhelmed with their responsibility of product launching all by themselves. A successful first launch requires a Sales and Marketing Automation checklist to streamline lead nurturing, track engagement, and maximize impact. But as you know, many product launches require things beyond the realm of product management conventions. For example, there will be sales campaigns for customer acquisition, marketing campaigns to create product adoption and visibility, and a knowledge base for the current customers to understand the latest features and benefits. 

Therefore, you must bring more visibility into your launch checklist, which can spark insightful conversations about the tasks required to ensure product success. 

Also, you can field some new ideas to inform and communicate with all the stakeholders early in the process of improvising and changing. Customer acquisition and feedback is an important step to be executed through a jobs-to-be-done framework. The framework helps the product stakeholders to shape the product offerings in alignment with the customer’s “needs or jobs done”. 

Final Thoughts 

In conclusion, you can prudently implement a product management plan by creating a launch checklist. These tips can help you build a single platform for overseeing and drilling into the launch details at any time. In the long run, it will help to improve product ownership and other stakeholders’ responsibilities toward the first product launch success.

Author’s Bio:

Shweta Milan is a content writer, studying Journalism from Delhi University. She writes on marketing, health related and business related topics and good in other parameters of technology, Photography and editing. She has written for Thrv – Jobs to be done.