How can I make it easier for my team and stakeholders to work with me on the marketing launch timeline when engineering releases are sometimes delayed?

I've never worked anywhere where releases don't get delayed - delays happen. The best you can do is to stay in as close communication with your key stakeholders as possible - informing them of updates in real-time. You won't lose trust with your team if you're open and honest: put a stake in the ground and establish a launch date if there isn't one, so that everyone can start planning their respective workstreams and you can ensure a successful launch. But also clearly communicate that there's a ...Read More

I think it's safe to say that all product releases come with some sort of delay or scope change, it's to be expected. But, it can oftentimes impact the morale of the team if there are repetitive delays. The biggest thing you can do is be transparent from the beginning. Oftentimes, if you're working closely with your product teams, you can get a sense if things may slip and dates may change. When you get that feeling, it's important to have a conversation with your PMs about it so that you can re ...Read More

My advice is to separate the ship and launch functions. In my experience when they are paired together, there is so much unproductive internal thrash when eng encounters delays and all the downstream teams have to re-adjust their plans. Instead, group new products and features into larger campaigns where if something doesn’t get released on time, you still have a compelling story to tell and your campaign doesn’t get derailed. Set expectations that all features must ship by X date to be included ...Read More

EVERY company I've ever worked for, the engineering releases were mostly... not on time. And before you think that's a dig, let's levelset. Product development is hard. You are bringing an idea to life and testing it in the wild. You make decisions that work or don't, and then have to clean up later. You get pulled by customers to do things you didn't originally scope, and sometimes have to pivot (a lot). Product development done right is iterative, messy, and non-linear. The best products are n ...Read More

A delayed product release is sometimes the most difficult thing for a product marketer to deal with as you've likely (ideally) started a product launch process early and a late minute change can throw a wrench into that process! Change is obviously easier if you are not working with a fixed launch date like an event or other live activity but change is never easy for stakeholders even if a launch date is not fixed. One way to handle this is to orient launches around themes rather than specific f ...Read More

Engineering timelines change for a variety of reasons. It's just the nature of the work. To help manage the expectations and emotions of others working on the marketing timeline, I take this approach:  Communicate early, openly, and as often as possible. That way, folks don't feel out of the loop or in the dark, and they know you have respect for their time and effort.  Don't overcommit to to timelines. I approach and communicate them with the caveat that there is always the possibility for dela ...Read More