The Real Product Lifecycle

What to Do BEFORE (and After) You Launch

What should you be paying attention to as you prepare to launch a product? Who should you be talking to? What indicators should you be looking for?

To build great products — and grow your brand — it is critical that you do your due diligence at each step of the product development process. One misstep could knock your product off track.

What follows are the six stages of the initial product lifecycle, the goals you should shoot for during each of them, and how to make it all happen. The first mile is going to be rough, but if you keep the right mindset, you’ll hopefully succeed.

1. Discovery Phase

As you begin designing your product, you need to learn as much as you possibly can about your market and your users.

First and foremost, study your users. Find out as much as you can about the problems your users are having and the current existing solutions that remedy them. You should begin to see specific ways you can do better — like building out new features that will make their lives easier.

During this initial round, you should also study your competitors, see what they are doing to solve these problems, and what they promote they will do next.

Then start thinking about what you’re going to build. Consider whether to build a mobile responsive app or a mobile app, understand which platforms you’re going to target, and decide if there will be services you’ll be selling among other things.

2. Alpha

Next, you need to choose a direction of what you should build and begin brainstorming around that.

Come up with as many new solutions to the problems as you can. Draw wireframes and outline workflows that prove that your product will solve a specific problem. Once you’re ready, show them to potential users and customers. Get feedback, iterate, get more feedback, and iterate again.

Success during the alpha phase requires thinking about the entire product — both the software and the user experience.

3. Beta

During the beta phase, your goal is to refine what you go to market with. You’ll have a complete product here, albeit one that’s likely at least a bit buggy. Ironing all that out starts with usability testing.

You can do this by creating clickable prototypes and then functional prototypes. Let users play with the product for a few hours or a few days to see what they think of it. Make sure that they find the product “sticky.” Avoid false positives and ensure people are willing to give you time, money, or social capital to use your product.

If people fight you when you try to take it away, you’ll know your product is irresistible and you’re on to something special.

4. Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

When you’re ready, launch the minimum viable product.

One of the hardest aspects of product planning and management is paring down features on your MVP. Initially, you’ll want to dream big, but it’s important to build software in tiny, manageable, stackable pieces.

Make sure you create a complete tool that helps solve a problem — and does so well, but don’t get bogged down in “nice-to-haves.” Build, measure, and learn. Apply your knowledge to keep improving your product.

5. Go to Market

Now it’s time to continue to gain traction in your target market.

Begin selling your product and iterate on marketing messaging, using different marketing channels. Keep testing and monitoring resulting data. Track your KPIs — not vanity metrics. That way, you can easily tell whether or not you’re succeeding in your efforts.

Finally, incentivize users to provide you with feedback so that you can make your product even stronger. Setting up a consistent feedback loop is a crucial part of this procedure — if your customers don’t love your product, what’s the point?

6. Iterate Based on Feedback

After establishing your product, you need to focus your efforts on capturing a larger chunk of market share. You should go to the drawing board to figure out how, exactly, your product can be enhanced.

To do this, listen to what they have to say. Don’t assume you know what your users want. Use the same tools as earlier for gathering feedback and market research/competitive intelligence. Keep running experiments and learning. No matter how strong your product is, chances are it can be better.

Building a game-changing product is hard work — there’s no denying that. But by taking your time and adhering to the above, you increase the chances your product will be a success. This is the Lean/Agile combined methodology. Good luck!

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SaaS Sales is = to Dating for Marriage

For years I’ve had conversations about how dating and SaaS contracts are similar. It’s something I discussed late night with James Watters when we were working on Pivotal Network, and if he agrees, it must have some weight. Thanks to Alana Kadden of INQUNE, SaaS Sales extraordinaire for reading through my outline to make sure I used the correct terms.

Also, I’d like to apologize in advance for the photos depicting hetero-normative dating. It’s easier to have consistent imagery and I didn’t want to confuse anything as friendship for the less enlightened. I did make an attempt to shift some stereotypes about genders and race, but that isn’t the point of this piece.

Above is a standard sales/marketing funnel that any business can use to think about the conversion steps that lead to a paying customer. It is the way that SaaS companies analyze where there is room for improvement in the sales process.

I think that the same funnel and activities apply to dating for marriage as well. Let’s explore each stage and how it’s dating equivalent.

Marketing to get Leads = Creating Online Profile

This is the opportunity to show off your best features, and what the potential benefits of connecting will be. Put your best foot forward and make yourself look great.

Lead Qualification by SDR = Pre-date Messaging

You want to see if it’s worth the mutual time investment and if there’s a real potential fit. Both sides ask a series of questions that they know what the minimum response required is to take the next step.

Initial Meet and Greet = First Date

You’re meeting face to face to check out the goods and further qualify the other side. The goal is to see how compatible your needs are with the what the other side can offer.

Product Demo & Documents = First Month of Dating

It’s a deeper dive into mutual needs to see if alignment exists. There’s no commitment yet, but you increasingly share more details to entice the other party.

Presentation for Stakeholders = Meeting friends

So you’ve decided there’s enough there to move forward and now you need to get buy in from other trusted advisors that this is a good idea to continue.

Bake off = Dating other people

This is NOT a required step, but sometimes it’s important to simultaneously compare a few options. Generally, all parties know this is happening, but rarely do you know who else is involved.

Proof of Concept = Exclusive dating

You’re willing to make a small bet that there’s potential for long term compatibility, but not ready to sign a long term contract. You want to see if after a few months, you don’t surface any big flaws that were previously overlooked.

Initial Limited Contract = Moving in Together

Hooray! You’ve passed enough qualification steps and you sign some official paperwork that ties you for around a year and makes it harder to separate. Both sides are invested in success, but also need to deliver on their promises in order to move to the next stage.

Upsell to Longer Contract = Proposal for Marriage

It’s time to decide if you want to increase investment and engagement for much larger period of time.

Large Implementation Kickoff = Marriage Ceremony

Publicly show that there is a long term agreement in place and encourage everyone to support it. This gesture greatly increases the social capital investment and associated risk of backlash if the partnership fails.

Ongoing Account Management = Marriage

At this point, both parties are very invested in long term success. They know that without good maintenance and attention, the other side might stop appreciating the value they bring and open the door for competitors.

Subscription Renewal = Renewal of Vows

Some contracts automatically renew, others require an explicit act to continue. If desired, there can be a public display of recommitment to another large period of time as partners.

Cancel Subscription = Divorce or Breakup

Not every relationship lasts forever, sometimes needs change, sometimes new competitors enter the market with better features. This can sometimes be avoided with proper account management and innovation, but even then is not always guaranteed. It is less effort to separate if the praetorship ends early, but it’s never easy.

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How to Hire a Great Developer

Developers become more important by the day. The great ones build apps that change our lives. The not-so-great ones build apps, too — but people aren’t dying to use them.

Now that you’ve validated your idea, taking your business to the next level starts with hiring a great developer. That easier said than done. As you go about your search for a new developer, here’s what you need to keep in mind.

Select Quality Developers

Whether you’re partnering with a dev shop or an individual contractor, it’s imperative that you ensure the developers you’re working with are extremely competent individuals who understand your business goals. So during the interview process, be sure to ask them what they’d do to build something you need. Their answers should include these three things:

1. Developers should be able to repeat back to you your goals to prove they understand what you’ve said. You can’t expect to form a strong working relationship if you’re unable to communicate clearly with a developer.

2. Developers should talk about multiple options they’d consider to prove they aren’t married to one technology or methodology. They need to be versatile and familiar with multiple tools and platforms.

3. Developers should be able to discuss why they’d choose a particular option based on your business goals. They need to be able to provide reasons for their selections.

A great format for a response to any technical question is: “I think we should go with X, because I evaluated X,Y, and Z and X is the one that matched your goal of A + B best.”

Bonus points are awarded to candidates who teach you about things you weren’t anticipating based on their previous experiences — but only if they do it without patronizing you.

Date Before You Marry

Once you’ve chosen a developer, the last thing you want is for a project or relationship to crash and burn. Your success will be dependent on whether he or she is able to execute. Be careful not to promise them too much equity or seniority at the beginning because unraveling that down the line will be a real pain.

The easiest way to know you’re choosing the best developer is by getting to know that person before you partner. Work on small project. Go to a hackathon together. Meet up at a bar for a drink or two. The more you get to know the person, the more informed your decision will be. If you can’t wait to move forward on projects after spending a ton of time together, you’ve got hope.

But beware: Don’t give away equity until you are sure of it. There are tons of horror stories — believe me.

Choosing the right people to work with is hard work in its own right. But because your success will be rooted in the talents of the people you surround yourself with, it’s imperative that you do your due diligence to hire the right individuals. It may take time to properly vet every candidate. But in the end, it’s totally worth it. Choose wisely!

Always be getting Feedback

The Lean Startup Methodology is already, by its very nature, lean. But I think that if it could reduced to one single, core tenet, it might be: “Iterate, iterate, iterate.” More specifically, iterate based on FEEDBACK.

Too many startups rush headlong into the development of their product without once passing it by real people in real environments. Their enthusiasm to get their product out into the market blinds them to the all-important role played by customer feedback.

Steve Blank and The Lean Startup machine underscore just how crucial it is get out of the building and ‘validate learning’ by engaging with real users to test your ideas and assumptions.

Here are four simple yet crucial rules to keep in mind when collating your developmental feedback.

1. You are not the user

I’ve talked about this before: you might have identified the problem your product is trying to address, but this does not mean a market for selling that potential product exists.

Strive to design a product informed by the collected responses of your market — not simply your own personal set of preferences.

And remember, simply having someone say they like the idea or product is not enough. Real validation is when someone else wants to give you their time, their money, or their social capital (click to watch the speech Validately CEO Steven Cohn gave on the topic).

2. You are there to listen

If you are talking 10% or more of the time you have withe the user, you have failed. There’s a UX researcher who’s only question during a field study is “Tell me about your day”. Then she let’s the person take it away from there and only asks clarifying questions later.

You need to give the user something open-ended to respond to narrow questions will provide limited information in response. When you restrict the list of possible answers to your own predetermined assumptions, you miss out on really learning. Your product will only stagnate when its faults are reinforced through biased feedback.

If you employ open-ended questions, you’ll get a better grip on what customers are actually thinking. By allowing space for customers to relay their personal experiences unimpeded by strict parameters, their descriptions will shed fresh light on what excites, delights, and frustrates them.

Open-ended questions can also follow more defined ones to gain additional information. For example, in an A/B test, ask WHY someone preferred site layout A over site layout B.

3. You are there to watch.

Whether you’re demonstrating a paper wireframe, showing a clickable prototype such as Invision, or using a platform like usertesting.com or Silverback, you need to let your user explore unhindered.

Don’t tell them to do a particular action, don’t hold their hand through the operation of some specific task, don’t blame them when they flounder through your UI.

Instead, ask them what they would do on the screen, how they feel about it, or why this particular button confused them. Ideally, you’ll gain an insight into what would happen if you weren’t sitting beside them.

Bottom line is that you know your product in an out, sit back and watch/listen to someone who’s seeing it for the first time. You’ll be surprised what you learn.

4. Gathering feedback is a constant process.

Continuous feedback and monitoring is key got your product to progress. Here are 6 options for sourcing on a rolling basis feedback on your product long after launch:

1. Talk to your internal teams: Ask the sales team what’s winning deals and what’s losing and who you’re losing to. Talk to customer service about current complaints and known work-arounds. Some of the best new features come from existing customers who are invested in your product being better.

2. Conduct Design Studios — Through this collaborative design exercise, design studios allow for internal sketching sessions to generate UX ideas and feedback from the whole team.

3. User council — Create a group of dedicated users who give periodic feedback on new designs to guide trajectory. By providing the opportunity for customers to tell you what’s going on you deepen your relationship with them and always have your finger on the pulse of their needs.

4. A/B testing — Given that most of us are frequently wrong, don’t release a single option, release two or three. Put out two similar or very different options, let data show you what’s good.

5. Use feature flags — This requires software development, but it means you can turn on a new feature to only a small group of users to make sure it works before releasing it to everyone.

6. Landing pages — Launch a few marketing microsites (such as Instapage) to help your understand market potential for new ideas. They don’t need even to have your brand on them if you’re afraid of a backlash.

If you remember these four tenants as you start and continue to develop your product through its whole life cycle then you’ll always be one step ahead of the competition.

The Right Communication Tool for the Job

Which to Use and When

Many startups see themselves as against the “corporate culture” of larger enterprises and avoid having meetings. In place of in person communication, online tools such as chat clients, email, wiki docs have gained in popularity. Each of these forms of communication has its place and purpose.

• Meetings — Great for getting the right decisions makers together to make informed choices and create consensus. If there are too many invitees or no agenda, your meeting will probably go off the rails. Make sure everyone who’s there has a known purpose.

• Emails — Should be used for confirmation of discussions that have already happened, quick status updates, or to coordinate a meeting. Make them short and to the point. Should NEVER be used to deliver bad news.

• Phone Calls — Perfect for quick discussions, especially where tone of voice is valuable and you want a fast response.

• Video Calls — As close are you can get to an in person meeting with remote team members or clients. These can be really helpful when diagnosing a problem by sharing screens or just to be reminded that the other side is human too.

• Webinars — One of the best ways to demo something to a group of people who you aren’t looking to provide immediate feedback.

• Chat Clients — Tools like Slack/Hipchat/Yammer/Chatter are ubiquitous in the startup community. They are great for reading a history of discussions (especially for teams that work in different timezones). Also great for for asking quick questions or sharing a link or update with a group.

• Wiki Pages — Home to information that will rarely change like repeatable procedures, company directories, or HR documents. These don’t get revisited very often, even though they can be assume they won’t be edited frequently.

• Text Messages — Only use when it is crucially important to get the message to the recipient ASAP.

The above are obviously never going to be followed precisely, but setting up good communication practices and being a model for your employees will save you from many problems down the line.

The Importance of Prioritization

When you’re slammed with work, there’s nothing worse than not knowing where to start. Whether tackling a complex project or a simple task, prioritization is pivotal, and it takes practice.

If you’ve ever wished the day were longer or struggled to complete commitments, you’re not alone. Beyond individuals, almost every company faces the same prioritization predicaments. Even top CEOs often lack the time and resources needed to actualize their ideas.

Given your company has limited runway and time to compete, how should you decide what to do, and when? Unhelpful as it may sound, your chosen prioritization strategy will depend on circumstance. However, some timeless prioritization principles will help you or your business in any endeavor. Read on to learn the five questions you must ask to solve any prioritization quandary!

1. Will users value the initiative?

Beyond sticking to goals, nothing is as important as ensuring customers value the business initiatives you pursue. Never prioritize a feature that doesn’t enhance user experience!

While some initiatives will prove more or less beneficial to users, questioning user value is a great starting point when prioritizing. Importantly, if enough users are clamoring for a feature, it’s a good idea to explore it! You may run the business, but customer feedback will surely illuminate loopholes. But don’t forget to look out for false positives!.

2. Does the initiative advance your business goals?

If any business guideline reigns universal it’s this: Start by setting goals, and never forget them! While a new idea be extremely exciting, expansion in the wrong direction can easily distance you from your goals and desired outcomes. The best goals are the specific things you’ve agreed will grow your company, improve retention, or decrease costs.

If you’re unsure how to proceed with a new business initiative, before anything else, ask yourself if the initiative advances your high-level business goals. If not, it may not be worth your time.

When your priorities are on point, the decisions you make are tightly tied to overarching business goals.

3. Does the idea benefit your brand?

By asking if the idea aligns with your brand, you’ll push yourself into “marketing mode.” As you know, marketing can make or break the success of a product. Strong brand presence equates to strong sales — so before prioritizing a new initiative, consider whether it falls within your customer’s brand understanding.

Follow this basic rule of thumb: ideas that build your present brand increase customer stickiness. If customers easily associate new and old business endeavors, they’ll trust the brand more deeply. For example, Uber customers embrace Uber pool and eats, as both initiatives connect to Uber’s high-level mission of getting them where (and what) they desire, wherever they may be, ASAP.

Alternatively, “off-brand” initiatives induce customer confusion and decrease retention which distance you from your business goals. Imagine if Prego sauce re-branded as Campbell’s (its parent company) you’d experience cognitive dissonance — as Campbell’s is thin and soupy and not what you want in marinara. You’d likely buy a different sauce and potentially soup brand moving forward. (*Note that Campbell’s decided to create Prego as a new brand name because of this issue.

4. Is the endeavor financially savvy?

Ideas are a dime a dozen, but good ideas which can actually make money are hard to come by. Before pursuing an initiative aligned with your goals and customer desires, research costs and opportunity costs. Make sure that the potential upside outweighs both.

However stoked you are on a given idea, think through what else you could accomplish with the same resources (financial and labor). Even if the idea “checks out” — meaning the business benefits will outweigh the resources it will cost — stay skeptical. Before proceeding, critically consider whether the potential benefits are positive enough to balance costs.

5. Is this initiative the real “MVP”?

No pun intended! Similar to the previous suggestion, before prioritizing an idea go through Minimum Viable Product (MVP) concepts and think about how they can apply to your feature. By starting with small, pared down, low-cost features, you’ll validate and refine your assumptions based on customer feedback. This enables you to identify the best experience without wasting resources.

6. Is it the right time?

T-t-t-timing is everything!

Is there a sense of urgency/crisis around what you’re working on? That’s a good indicator you should move quickly. If not, maybe you can wait and think more strategically.

Ask yourself: Will this initiative build a foundation necessary for future growth? Will present market conditions foster this initiative’s success? If the answer to either of these questions is “No,” it’s probably not time to prioritize this idea.

In conclusion, when building a business, prioritizing initiatives based on value and urgency is key. Don’t let excitement blind you from evaluating every idea’s true worth for growing your company and brand. When in doubt, Mitchel Harper says to employ the 1 / 2 method to always ensure you’re working on top value items. Use the guidance above to decide what to do next whether it’s what feature to build, when to hire someone(NEED LINK), or which new product to launch.