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Product Launch in an Agile World

With David Daniels

How would you like to ship something every week?

Agile software development methods can produce dramatic productivity improvements but can also create havoc for Sales and Marketing teams. Frequent product releases can often surpass the ability of organizations to absorb the changes in a manageable way. This can result in new product capabilities that should be emphasized being lost in the chaos of getting the product to market. It also has the potential to disrupt the sales cycle.

Better definition of the "Product Launch" as the beginning of the sales process and not the end of the development cycle changes the perspective significantly. Instead of repeatedly forcing new versions of the product out the building, the focus shifts to how to sell the product, regardless of the incremental features added in any given iteration.

This webinar will examine how Development and Marketing see each other, and discuss the new opportunities Marketing has in an Agile world.

Watch "Product Launch in an Agile World"






About the Presenter

David Daniels

David Daniels is an instructor for Pragmatic Marketing with more than 25 years of experience in B2B technology companies. David specializes in product marketing and product launch with an emphasis on effective go-to-market strategy and execution. He has an extensive software development, sales, product management, product marketing and executive background with a global perspective of the product launch process from end-to-end.

Previously David was founder and president of Launch Clinic, which was acquired by Pragmatic Marketing in 2008 and continues to publish the Launch Clinic blog. Prior to starting Launch Clinic, David held executive positions in publicly traded technology companies driving successful product introductions.

David has a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia.

Solving business problems

Posted by Julie Anne Reda at 2008-10-17 07:22 PM
That is a 'feature by feature' comparison. How do you address 'solving business problems aka user stories' in a competitive environment when often sales of software products is feature by feature? ...or if industry software analysts are comparing your features vs. competitor's features?

on agile sales

Posted by Steve Johnson at 2008-10-24 11:55 AM
The best sales people sell solutions to problems; the losers sell feature by feature. Only the leader wins the 'feature game' so don't play unless you're the leader.

The point of agile is to increase your confidence in the final result by doing 100% of something instead of 70% of everything. For most organizations, this approach delivers better results than a laundry-list of features with a ship date.

Suggestions?

Posted by Norman Eldridge at 2008-10-17 07:22 PM
A sound approach, but will likely require very disciplined communications between development and sales (e.g., don't tell sales what is in development, but what has been developed). Suggests on sales/dev communications processes?

on discipline

Posted by Steve Johnson at 2008-10-23 11:07 AM
I've found that product managers need to be much more disciplined in communications than they have been. We often tell sales people and customers what we hope will happen and then regret it later when reality sets in. What I like about David's approach is that you tell sales what is, rather than what will be. How nice to have a launch with "oh, and one more thing" rather than "oops, that's not ready after all."

Advice?

Posted by Gerry Callejo at 2008-10-17 07:22 PM
When development encounters a major problem in their interations that causes a significant delay impacting the launch date, how do you best advise corp marketing to adjust the launch, especially if it's centered around a major event - show?

change happens

Posted by Steve Johnson at 2008-10-23 11:07 AM
Once in a while, you truly hit a snag and delays occur. But you shouldn't hit a snag in every release! In my waterfall days, every release had some hidden surprise. Don't yours?

My rule is this: as soon as you discover a problem, tell product management. If it impacts others--and it usually does--we'll call team meeting to figure out the best approach. Do we delay the launch? Or descope the product? Let's assume that we're all on the same team... the launch team should receive the same courtesy as we'd hope them to be with the product team.

My thoughts on the Webinar

Posted by Christina Hopkins at 2008-10-17 07:22 PM
This is more of a comment so you don't have to share but what I find when I attend these webinars is that those attending have a hard time getting away from the "rules" of Product Management and what they really should be doing is looking at each situation as a whole and approaching it with the rules as guidelines but adjusting them to make the solution to the situation work. That is really what this webinar was about in my mind. It is a hybrid of Waterfall from the launch perspective but uses Agile to get to the launch.

good point

Posted by Steve Johnson at 2008-10-23 11:07 AM
I think sometimes people look for the silver bullet, the simple solution. We've tried to convey best practices in our webinars and seminars but sometimes we rely on practical practices instead. The practical approach may not always be the best but it works. :-)

Agile in a Hardware Company?

Posted by Lourdes Valdez at 2008-10-17 07:22 PM
Can an agile approach work for a hardware company? Numerous iterations seem to be less feasible in this model.

on agile in hardware

Posted by Steve Johnson at 2008-10-24 11:55 AM
LEAN is a method developed for hardware but finding its way into software as well. The agile approach is sound for both: build 100% of something, get market validation, then do more. We may not DELIVER the iterations but you COULD. Think about the iPod: they delivered the full functionality in phases and made money along the way. They didn't wait until they had full color and video support; the first generation only supported the Mac via Firewire.

Blogging

Posted by Andrew Lee at 2008-10-17 07:22 PM
How can you leverage blogging in the product launch? - your experience would help my team. What are some parts of launch? best-practices? product briefs, presentations, events, user groups, workshops, webinars...all the above I would assume...

on the new rules

Posted by Steve Johnson at 2008-10-24 11:55 AM
I suggest that you should be blogging or updating a wiki on a weekly basis--for your internal teams. "I've just seen the new thermostat capability and it's fantastic!" It allows you to communicate with the bigger team and generate some internal enthusiasm.

Enterprise software companies probably cannot externalize the blog to the customers but perhaps to an inner circle of customers? Consumer product teams may feel more comfortable reporting results of each iteration to their loyal customers.

Question

Posted by Steven Milstein at 2008-10-17 07:22 PM
Isn't it more important to say what the release will address & not how it will be addressed? Earlier, David suggested Product Management should focus on what pains the upcoming release will address, as opposed to, what features/buttonsit will include. Why would we focus on what was in a particular iteration?

completely agree

Posted by Steve Johnson at 2008-10-24 11:55 AM
Product management should indeed focus on the pains and not the features. The point of demoing each iteration is that you increase your confidence that the problem is solved. In the old days, release day was always high risk, high fear-factor as you discovered that the shipping product was missing capabilities and/or had additional ones that no one else knew about.

Indeed, focus on the problems, not the features.

AGILE and SaaS

Posted by Amy A. Patterson at 2008-10-17 07:39 PM
How does AGILE and SaaS dovetail? One it a development methodology and one is a delivery methodology...but how do you bring the two together and make sure the entire company is ready for rapid development and delivery? And how does the Product Manager keep up!

on SaaS

Posted by Steve Johnson at 2008-10-24 11:55 AM
I think most vendors have learned that you cannot do SaaS without Agile. The challenge that SaaS companies have is that they CAN and DO post new releases as soon as they're available--rather than collecting them up into a more formal launch. SaaS customers are often disconcerted by the ever-changing environmental. You find something new every day!

So instead of dribbling features out every week, many companies have learned to buffer them up into a quarterly release that is "launched" to the customer base with a little more splash.