How can you influence the immediate product roadmap if the pre-launch customer research revealed to you that the MVP would not add significant value to your customers?

The first time this happens at your company (assuming the MVP is already built), you have to let the product launch and (likely) fail in the market. There's likely too much internal momentum around this MVP and you won't be able to stop the runaway train, no matter how loudly you yell. Now, you should absolutely share the customer research and your perspective on the MVP's dim prospects in a clearly worded email to the Product leadership team (and perhaps the CEO, depending your company size). B ...Read More

This happens a lot more than you might think. The Product team looks at the market and decides to build a feature. The feature is rolled out as an early alpha and customers are disappointed. What do you do? This is actually one of the easier scenarios in which to influence the roadmap. A few years ago we rolled out an integration with a 3rd party instant messaging service. The integration worked without a problem, but we noticed that not many customers were signing upto the Alpha (even though th ...Read More

Great question and tough but interesting situation. Ideally this research is not coming in right before launch and you have time to adjust. I would want to understand if as a result of the research we know what a compelling MVP would look like - ideally a few versions - and work with the PM team to scope out what it would take to implement different variants. Hopefully you can find a solution that is not materially different than the original scope and timelines for the project. The key way to p ...Read More

For your sake, I'd hope that if your research shows that MVP doesnt equate to a value add for your customers, that causes your product team to make a full stop and push. That said, at this point I think you need to put your PM hat on and think about what features might make users see value in your product and opportunity size those features for what could be the easiest to deliver in a meaningful way. Have that conversation with your PM team and also reiterate the cost to launching a non valuabl ...Read More

Oh man, the most impactful thing an organization can do is accept bad news. Think of how lucky you are. If you can stop the train, you've only wasted a lot of money on product development. You now have the opportunity to save a ton on launch, ongoing marketing, sales training, sales hours, partner enablement, and more - all of which is doomed to fail if there's no product / market fit. Now it's time for some important questions: What made people think this was a good idea? Something led the prod ...Read More