How do you assess organizational readiness ahead of a product launch?

Organization readiness can be measured at different altitudes…e.g. Super high level and broad: does the business have the right strategy to win? vs. tactical: are we set up for a successful product launch and meet near-term goals? And points in-between. Let’s assume the big strategy pieces are figured out and set up for success and we’re focusing on the more near-term tactical pieces of a successful launch. There are a few areas that I focus on to assess launch readiness. For all of these, the k ...Read More

One thing that has been wonderful at Seismic is we have someone on the product marketing team that is in a program management role and who is responsible for driving and faciliating organizational readiness for launches (shout out to my colleague, Steve!). He pulls together "tiger teams" for our major launches with representatives from around the company, leads weekly meetings, and manages our project plan. This takes some of that organizational readiness weight off the PMM. The PMM lead may sti ...Read More

Great question! For the Jira Work Management launch I was actually the first team hire. This was really important for the dynamic of our team and we eshewed the common "triad" for a "quad". That is to say that I helped design the product and no large decisions were made without my input, whether that was for design, engineering, or product. The same existed in the reverse, where everyone knew what the marketing gameplan was and was able to give their suggestions and thoughts.I would say that eve ...Read More

This is an awesome question.  The way we've gotten ahead of it when I was at Zendesk - which has worked well - is by creating an "Operations Council" who is responsible for reviewing the operational components of a launch. This includes reviews of things like billing readiness, pricing & packaging, and making sure that we have reporting systems ready for us to track the success of a launch.  These meetings are staffed by stakeholders in each department as well as their respective leadership. ...Read More

I'll assume that the organization's leadership is aligned to the product roadmap (in general) when answering this question. Organizational readiness can have several factors including sales training, product market fit, clarity on understanding who your ideal customer profile (ICP) is, product truth and value, and market timing. Additionally, org readiness might change depending on the launch scope. Is this new launch targeting existing customer? That might mean you spend more time with the cust ...Read More

I start with the objectives of the launch and work from there. I look for advantages that can be leveraged and obstacles that need to be removed. I assign functional areas (e.g. Sales, Finance, Legal) to each launch member of my launch team. One of their primary responsibilities is to identify readiness gaps that can prevent us from achieving our launch objectives (OKRs). A Launch Readiness Plan is created for each functional area to document the readiness gaps, prioritize the gaps based on seve ...Read More