On Monday we launched ExchangeDefender 7. So to be fair, I’ve had 7 opportunities to learn how to do this right 😉 I’m offering this out loud because as much as it is just simple common sense, you don’t have much common sense when you’ve worked fireman hours for days under stress and rolling deadlines.
Think you’re ready? Add two weeks.
No matter how optimistic and confident you are about your product/service, I guarantee you will find imperfections and opportunities to do something better all the way to the very end. So do yourself a favor – give yourself extra two weeks to polish things out. You’d be amazed just how long two weeks are when you think you’ve got nothing to do – and you’ll ship a much better product as a result of it. Everyone can wait a week or two for a better product.
Speak early, speak often, speak even though nobody is listening.
Microsoft has ruined beta testing for IT professionals – to the point that most people won’t give you a look even after you’re all done with it. You have to ignore that fact. Going through revisions and pitches perfects your final delivery, be it a marketing message or a polished look and feel. The more you talk the more ideas you’ll have and more importantly, nothing sounds quite as stupid as your voice describing a bad idea. It all sounds like Shakespeare and Einstein in your mind, but once you try a live demo or hear yourself describing a terrible idea… you’ll be buying a wider wastebasket.
Realize that not everyone is listening, reading or watching.
People ignore your spammy newsletters. They don’t read your corporate blog. They don’t follow you on twitter and could care less about your Facebook wall. Most people fit into that category. Those that follow you on Twitter, Facebook, read your newsletters and blog posts probably don’t have a job or will soon find unemployment – so don’t worry about over communicating. On the eve of the launch I blogged, tweeted, Facebooked, NOC blogged, emailed and yes – called – my partners to make sure they were ready and knew what to expect.
Don’t let yourself fall into a trap of thinking you’re alienating people by communicating about the launch. Also don’t let the marketing people or sales people run the show – launch of a product is a technical task and should be handled and managed by the technical people. Imagine having a problem with a piece of software and calling to talk to a braindead sales guy that can’t tell an IP from an MX record? How poorly would that reflect on you and your product? Staff techies and be technical. Marketing and sales will get their turn, but without the product there is nothing to sell.
Remember that you are going to fail if you think you can use one source for everyone to pay attention to. It doesn’t work like that – it’s not about you, it’s about your customers. If they follow Twitter, you better tweet it. If they read your blog, it needs to be there. Even if it’s the same thing, communication convenience trumps all other concerns.
Plan to fail.
This one is not easy: What happens if it all goes wrong? Most people read this and think you need a failover plan and you need to test it. It’s not that simple.
You need several backup plans. You don’t know what will go wrong (if you did, you’d check and check and check some more): So you need a failover plan for anything you can imagine going wrong whether it’s under your control or not.
The “or not” part of your control is a biggie. We often plan contingencies for the problems that we think we’ll cause. What if you’re just about to pull the trigger, you pull it and the power runs out? Did it work or not? Keep your blood pressure medication nearby… or plan to fail.
How do you do that? Overcommunicate to your partners and clients what will happen and how to communicate with you.
Everyone expects you to fail. This is one of the good things Microsoft brought to the IT industry – nobody expects you to be flawless out the gate and folks will understand. Unless you keep them in the dark.
Plan to fail is all about explaining to your clients how they can contact you and get the latest information what is going on if things aren’t going according to plan.
Focus on the mission at hand.
This is the biggest and most important thing I’ve learned about running a large company vs. when I was a small fry: The job of the launch is to deliver a functional product/service.
It’s not to blow up shiny stuff and confetti and wear a turtleneck – not until you’ve got billions in cash and have been singlehandedly credited with starting the PC revolution and the mobile/tablet revolution. You’re not Steve Jobs. You’re the dude that makes sure the lights hit his slide deck just right.
This tends to be the most complex part of every effort because lot’s of people with lot’s of great ideas tend to show up at the very end for the party. There is no party. There is a pile of empty Diet Mountain Dew cans all over the conference desk.
Launch time is not celebrated with Champagne with AC/DC Thunderstruck blasting on the cheap laptop speakers. It’s “Did it work?” behind the glow of a monitor in a dark conference room, with the background noise of all the alarms tripping under the sudden load of the application people actually use.
Your job now is not to promote the product. Not to tell people about the new features. Not to offer them a discount for being the first to sign up. As a matter of fact, the only people that talk now are the ones that never talk to other human beings: ops and development.
Oh, and one more thing..
Always do it when there are as few people as possible around to watch you fail.
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