Do you ever delay a feature or product "launch" after it's already been released by engineering?

Yes! There are many reasons why you may want to hold off on launching a feature or product after it’s already been released. This often happens when you want to either bundle a bunch of features for a coherent narrative, or there’s a time in the market when it would be better to capitalize (for instance, if there’s a large tech event where you can unveil your new product or feature to maximize press). To get a bit more specific, here are some scenarios:

• Align with Market Timing: A competing product launch, economic event, or company-related factor (like a major news cycle) may make the current timing suboptimal. Conversely, a major event related to your industry or even seasonality. For seasonality, perhaps waiting until the highest number of users are interested, for example at MyFitnessPal that would be January for New Years health resolutions, would help boost your product launch since more people would already be in the mindset of looking for a product like yours that helps them with their problems.

• Additional Testing Needed: If user testing or beta feedback indicates critical bugs or negative user experiences, and you’re seeing the same at initial release, you may need to hold back on promoting the product until it's fixed.

• Testing Product-Market Fit/Experimentation: Sometimes you don’t know if the product or feature will fully solve the problem or appeal to your target audience, and you may actually roll it back. Oftentimes, features that are released may actually be in experimentation mode and evolving a lot, so it may make sense to hold off on a full launch until there’s more confidence that the feature or product in its current iteration is there to stay. You can also soft-launch a product by making it available to a limited audience for additional feedback while delaying the broader public launch.

I have in the past, mostly due to external factors like internal readiness (help center articles, website updates, launch assets), but I don't recommend it.

If you have a lot of customers using the product or feature, or perhaps even beta customers, it can lead to customer confusion if it hasn't been properly explained. You can also lose the ability to have a PR hold on the information, leading to you being "scooped" and not being able to control the narrative or product messaging.

Great question. The decision to delay a product release announcement should be based on a combination of factors, including product readiness, market conditions, competition, regulatory requirements, and overall business strategy. I've listed them below:

• How important is this release? This is a broad question that answers things like:

  • What is the impact of not announcing this launch? Is there a revenue impact or a customer satisfaction impact?

  • Is this a tier 1 release that may require a corresponding tier 1 marketing plan?

• Competitive timing: You might want your announcement to coincide with a specific event or market opportunity. For example, you may want to avoid announcing your product at the same time as a major competitor to avoid being overshadowed.

• Can we bucket this feature or product release into themes? I did this at LinkedIn several years ago where we launched features as part of a "Quarterly Product Release", but we did ensure that several key collaterals were updated in case customers discovered the feature. The assets include updating FAQs on the website and informing key customer-facing teams.

• Market research & testing: Additional time can be beneficial to refine your messaging and marketing strategy to better resonate with your audience and address any unforeseen concerns or objections.

• Compliance & regulatory concerns: We delayed our launch at an AI start-up because we were in a heavily regulated industry - healthcare. Certain products, especially in regulated industries may require additional time for compliance with legal and regulatory standards. It also ensured that we were meeting our customers' needs, as they also needed to be compliant with the tools used.

• Availability & scalability: If your product relies on external resources or technologies, delaying the announcement can give you time to secure those resources