What do you if you are going to miss a deadline
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Ross Weems provides tips for product managers who may miss an upcoming product launch. He recommends continuously communicating with stakeholders about priorities, risks, and status updates. Managers should hand over release planning to experts and prioritize features realistically based on importance and potential customer impact. Starting with an internal press release and pre-mortem can help strengthen plans and avoid potential reasons for failure.
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What do you if you are going to miss a deadline
- 1. 1 Ross Weems @rossman Product Camp Austin What do you do if you are going miss a product launch? Ross Weems
- 3. 3 Ross Weems @rossman ProductCamp Austin Intro
- 4. 4 Ross Weems @rossman ProductCamp Austin Communicate themes, not features
- 5. 5 Ross Weems @rossman ProductCamp Austin Hand over release planning to the experts! You’re a product manager, you’re not a project manager — you shouldn’t be working two jobs.
- 6. 6 Ross Weems @rossman ProductCamp Austin Prioritize Realistically! • Is this feature all that important? • Do we have any quick wins? • Will launching or not launching it really make a difference? • How upset will customer be if we re-prioritize? • Is this big priority worth putting all our resources in this one basket? • Should we kill the project altogether?
- 7. 7 Ross Weems @rossman ProductCamp Austin Keep on top of those risks! https://medium.com/@andrefaria/try-an-internal-press-release-before-starting-new-products-867703682934#.akyr8mj2v
- 8. 8 Ross Weems @rossman ProductCamp Austin Status updates Emails Conversations Continuously Communicate to the stakeholders!
- 9. 9 Ross Weems @rossman ProductCamp Austin Things to consider for the next product launch
- 10. 10 Ross Weems @rossman ProductCamp Austin Start with an Internal Press Release • Heading—Name the product in a way the reader (i.e. your target customers) will understand. • Sub-Heading —Describe who the market for the product is and what benefit they get. One sentence only underneath the title. • Summary —Give a summary of the product and the benefit. Assume the reader will not read anything else so make this paragraph good. • Problem —Describe the problem your product solves. • Solution —Describe how your product elegantly solves the problem. • Quote from You —A quote from a spokesperson in your company. • How to Get Started —Describe how easy it is to get started. • Customer Quote —Provide a quote from a hypothetical customer that describes how they experienced the benefit. • Closing and Call to Action —Wrap it up and give pointers where the reader should go next. https://medium.com/@andrefaria/try-an-internal-press-release-before-starting-new-products-867703682934#.akyr8mj2v
- 11. 11 Ross Weems @rossman ProductCamp Austin Pre-Mortem https://medium.com/@andrefaria/try-an-internal-press-release-before-starting-new-products-867703682934#.akyr8mj2v • Pre-mortem Structure • Meeting Details • Detail Plan • Accept plan has failed...badly • Elicit reasons for failure • Gather and prioritize the list of reasons • Strengthen the plan to avoid disaster • Create a proactive solution
- 12. 12 Ross Weems @rossman ProductCamp Austin Keep on top of those risks! https://medium.com/@andrefaria/try-an-internal-press-release-before-starting-new-products-867703682934#.akyr8mj2v
- 13. Thank You! 13
Editor's Notes
- The cold, hard truth is that if you’re a product manager, you will miss your deadlines. It happens all the time to product managers everywhere. No matter how you try to avoid it, issues will arise, priorities will change, and unforeseen circumstances and issues will squash your plans. And yet, this is still one of the most common questions product managers ask us, “But what do I do when we realize we’re not going to be able to launch on time?” First of all, there is no reason to panic. This is the unknown territory you were hired to manage. If the variables have changed, so can your plans. You have every right to change the launch date. You can even change your mind about priorities if that’s what you’ve realized is best for your product. But you can’t do any of that if you’ve promised too much, too early. This is the problem many of the PMs run into — they put themselves in a box and then they can’t get out. You don’t have to do this to yourself. If you successfully build enough space around your plans today, you can negotiate the specifics later. The wiggle room you create for yourself now puts an incredible amount of power and confidence back in your hands. You don’t have to commit to anything anymore!
- If you’re promising features, you’re going to HAVE to deliver on them — and you will get a lot of grief when you go back on your word. So don’t promise anyone anything. Communicate with themes instead. For example, a theme could be: “Awesome reviewer experience”, “User story management” or “Custom reporting” — each with a short description as towhat your goal is, why you’re building it, and what your goals are tying it back to your product canvas. (By the way, I’m lifting these straight out of ProdPad’s public roadmap.) We are always clear and transparent with our themes so our stakeholders know what to expect from us — but we also want to leave ourselves room to adjust when and how we do it. If you work with themes, you get to control how you solve a problem rather than getting stuck solving pieces of a problem. It’s also much easier to communicate changes using a theme-based roadmap because you haven’t tied yourself down to a specific feature or release date. Just think — if you cancel a feature you’ve already promised, you’re going to have to do a lot of damage control. Instead, if you’ve communicated the overall themes you are going to tackle in the current term, you can easily shuffle your priorities around. Maybe instead of 1–2–3, you go 2–3–1. Or 3–2–1. The important thing is you’ve already communicated your priorities to everyone, so nothing will come as a surprise
- When you’ve decided on a set of priorities, send them over to your dev leads or project managers. They can evaluate the specs, allocate resources and come back to you with time estimates. At the end of the day, they know and understand the resources at their disposal better. If you’ve spec’d out things properly (which hopefully, you have), then anyone from the lead dev to the junior dev can pick up something at any point and work on it. Let them dictate the order and speed in which they knock out their tasks, so you can adjust your priorities against them.
- Why wait until the worst thing happens? The best product managers know that the worst thing IS going to happen. Know where the cracks might be and have a backup plan ready. Get some help from your other teams here, especially your client-facing colleagues. Sales, support and marketing have useful insights, but you have to dig for them early and often. Ask yourself and your teams questions like these to help you identify an alternative course of action:
- Working backwards For new initiatives a product manager writes an internal press release announcing the finished product, it is "centered around the customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions", writes McAllister.
- Working backwards For new initiatives a product manager writes an internal press release announcing the finished product, it is "centered around the customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions", writes McAllister.
- This is the basic structure of a pre-mortem meeting and we’ll review each part. The first step is the Meeting Details which involves: Inviting all stakeholders (engineers, PM, Marketing, etc.) Setting aside two full hours Assign notetaker - there’s going to be a ton of great information and you need one person to focus on capturing it all. Bring lots of sticky notes and pens for everyone Detail Stage Bring all of the proposed work and discuss them as a team. Review the order they will be addressed, which resources will work on them, etc. Accept plan has failed...badly. Travel to the end of the quarter and explain how all of the goals failed miserably. Detail the awfulness. Step four is eliciting reasons for failure Ask each stakeholder to list every problem that has a remote chance of derailing your project. I call this the brainstorming session of doom. Each person should write at least 8-10 reasons. Specifically ask for reasons they ordinarily wouldn’t mention as potential problems, for fear of being impolite or protecting someone’s feelings. Honestly is essential and I’ve found people don’t take things personally. We’re simply listing a lot of very bad scenarios and were not critiquing people’s abilities. Gather and prioritize the list of reasons Use affinity mapping to organize issues into logical groups There are three rules for which issues to focus on: Focus on show-stoppers In other words, if it occurs, will it severely impact the project? If the answer is no, cross it off; it doesn’t belong on your pre-mortem list. Pick problems likely to happen Don’t waste time solving problems that are extremely unlikely. Hone in on the “elephant in the room” problems that came up—the ones everyone was secretly worried about but may not have brought up until now. Discard problems you have no control over Every project will face some external risks that you simply can’t control. As you noticed I like using cheesy stock photos and demotivational poster. However, this is what it should look like after you’ve done the brainstorming session of doom and some affinity mapping. Once you’ve determined the top concerns I suggest this simple Probability and Impact matrix for the next step. Anything in the red area MUST be addressed. Orange items should be discussed as well. Once the biggest problems are out in the open, their solutions become surprisingly simple.
- Working backwards For new initiatives a product manager writes an internal press release announcing the finished product, it is "centered around the customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions", writes McAllister.