Product Management
5 things to remember when launching a new product
We recently launched a new product into the Apple App Store and it reiterated to us 5 key things to remember when embarking upon a product launch.
1. Test, Test, and Test Again
There is no substitution for thorough testing, and the more devices and operating systems you do it across the better. What appears to work and look good on one device will not necessarily work on another, and vice versa. Get yourself a proper test plan, and detail out all your test cases to make sure you’ve got a record of the testing you’ve done, and can provide your developers with as much information as possible to help reproduce any issues that you find.
2. Immerse yourself in your audience
Find out as much as you can about your target audience, their practises and how they use technology in order to mould your product launch into a language they understand, at a time and place which is convenient to them.
3. Stay on Top of your Statistics
If you already have a version of the product in market, keep an eye on your statistics to see when the product has the least usage so that you can launch your new version in the time with the least traffic. This decreases the impact you’ll have on your users if anything goes wrong, and you have to rollback.
4. Always have a rollback plan
No matter how perfect your new product seems in testing, there is no telling the variables that can change and what will happen when you go live. This means you need a rollback plan. What you will do in the event of having to remove the latest update to your product and how you plan to migrate users back to the old version.
5. DVT
Not Deep Vein Thrombosis, but your Deployment Verification Testing. When all your scripts have been run, and your production release checklist is complete, it’s time to check what your release looks like in production. Don’t ever forget this one, as things have a habit of changing in live environments.