AMA: CloudBees VP of Product Marketing, Shafiq Shivji on Product Launches

The two things that matter most are pipeline and adoption. On the pipeline side, I track the full funnel: MQLs generated, conversion to SQLs, and then conversion through every stage of the sales cycle. I monitor this consistently so I can see where things are performing and where they're breaking. If MQLs are strong but SQL conversion drops, that's likely a qualification problem. If SQLs are healthy but deals stall mid-cycle, that's an enablement or competitive issue. The funnel tells you where ...Read More

The most common one is product readiness, which is why I separate the product-ready date from the launch date and work within a defined window, as I described earlier. Beyond product readiness, there are a few that I see consistently. Not getting stakeholder alignment early. A product marketer's number one job is to herd the cats. Do a stakeholder mapping exercise early in the process. Identify who needs to be involved, what kind of RACI you need, and bring people along the journey with you. PMM ...Read More

In my experience at the enterprise level in B2B, PMM doesn't typically own channel selection directly. Others may have a different experience. I’ve owned the strategic inputs: ICP definition, positioning, messaging by audience, and tier classification. Demand gen and campaign teams take those inputs and build the channel strategy. The PMM job is to make sure those inputs are sharp enough that the channel strategy actually works. If the ICP is wrong, it doesn't matter how good or cost-efficient y ...Read More

Early in my career, this was one of the most frustrating challenges I faced. I felt beholden to product timelines. Dates kept shifting, the GTM work was done, and none of it seemed to matter. Launches would push weeks, then quarters. It took me a while to realize that the solution wasn't to fight the timeline shifts. It was to change the framework entirely. What I've learned to do is separate the product-ready date from the launch date. They are not the same thing. The product-ready date is when ...Read More

To me, post-launch is more critical than the launch itself. What I've observed over my career is that a lot of energy goes into the launch moment and then things fizzle out. The launch is exciting, it's a great moment for the company, but the real value is what happens after: are sellers pitching it, are CSMs educating customers, is it driving pipeline, and are customers actually adopting and getting value? The first thing I do is conduct a formal retrospective about a month after launch. It's b ...Read More

Before discussing the how, let me address a common occurrence I’ve seen time and time again: customer proof turns into a last-minute scramble during a product launch. Customer evidence should never be treated as a launch task. It needs to be embedded in the product development lifecycle from the start. In an ideal world, customers are brought in early, not just for product feedback but to serve as your first proof points. At CloudBees, we introduced a partner design program in which customers en ...Read More

In my humble opinion, the specific tool matters less than having a centralized system of record that people actually use. For launch planning, Google Sheets is my go-to. I've built intricate launch plans in Smartsheet with dependencies mapped, tried Asana once, but got frustrated with the UI and went back to Sheets. The last launch my team ran here at CloudBees, they kept it dead simple: a launch hub on Confluence. It worked. The discipline of keeping things centralized and accessible to the rig ...Read More