AMA: HubSpot Group Product Manager, Lukas Pleva on Managing Mature Products

One of the benefits of working with a mature product is that you likely have access to a large pool of existing users from whom you can solicit feedback. In contrast, new and emerging products often have a much smaller user base, especially in the early stages or if you’re still working on finding product-market fit. With that said, here are two of my favorite methods for gathering feedback: Built-in, In-App CSAT/NPS Widget Many of the products I've worked on invite users to provide feedback dur ...Read More

Creating a product roadmap is fraught with challenges, regardless of whether you’re working on a new/growing or a mature product. That said, when dealing with mature products, it’s especially important to consider: Change Management: A mature product likely has a large, established user base accustomed to how the product functions – including its supported use cases, quirks, etc. This presents a challenge when considering significant changes, like overhauling the user interface or significantly ...Read More

I tend to focus on two groups of indicators. First, did we deliver a delightful user experience that added value to the customer?  My go-to for answering this is Google’s HEART framework: Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success. For Happiness, I look at metrics like user CSAT or NPS. For Engagement, I consider metrics such as average session length. For Adoption, I focus on key activation metrics (e.g., inviting a friend to join, publishing a first post, etc.). For Retention ...Read More

The unsatisfying, but honest, answer is “it depends.” As a general principle, addressing tech debt should be a continuous consideration. Without it, you put your product’s long term security, reliability, and scalability (both in terms of handling new users but also in terms of being able to quickly implement changes and updates) at risk.  That said, how often you’ll need to spend development calories on addressing tech debt is contingent on a variety of factors:  Overall technical architecture ...Read More

It’s common to assume that mature products have a static, well-defined persona. However, product teams should aim to continuously challenge and pressure-test that assumption. Specifically: We should continuously validate whether our long-held assumptions about user demographics, behaviors, needs, and pain points remain valid. Markets inevitably change, and user preferences evolve. Is our ideal customer who loved and raved about our product two years ago still the same one who’s doing so today? R ...Read More