If your product team works in two-week sprints, how do you balance and prioritize each launch? In other words is a "release" always a "launch" and how do you differentiate and treat each?

That sounds really challenging, but exciting to work on a product that iterates so quickly. First, I'd work with your product team and try to show the impact of bundling a few small updates at a time, rather than piecemeal. It's tough to break through if all the updates are small and are so frequent — users start to zone them out. You can better help reach product goals with bigger launch moments that can pack more of a punch — which will help the product team reach their goals, too. Can you get ...Read More

For larger product marketing teams, there's a whole function around "release marketing", which aims to showcase the added value consistently. Activities might include a "weekly wrap-up" or "what's new in [product]" monthly update via social media channels, newsletters, community forums, and/or a dedicated space on the company website. For example, Confluence has a dedicated webpage for these types of updates: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/features/whats-new, and you can see scree ...Read More

I would suggest bundling the two week sprints into a larger quarterly release cycle so you can benefit from a bigger, impactful story. If you are hitting your customer base with new features every 2 weeks, I can guarantee you they are going to be fatigued, saturated, and less likely to engage. People are suffering from cognitive load, so cut through the noise and surface the features that matter on more sustainable and customer-friendly cadence.  In terms of release and launch terminology: a rel ...Read More

I always frame a "release" as an engineering event in which new capabilities or a new product (after having been deemed "complete," passing QA, Docs fully update, etc) are either ready to be made available to customers in the form of distinct Release Candidate (RC) build or, in the case of SaaS, made available to customers on a rolling basis. Either way, there's no integrated marketing support in the form of PR, AR, social, demand gen, etc - that would be a "launch" - but PMM still needs to make ...Read More

Good question! Mindset shift suggestion: Every release, or update, or upgrade is a launch. BUT there are different tiers of launches which enable us to provide a very low level, but consistent level of support. It's not the job of PMM to create fanfare around every single update, but it IS our job to create understanding around each. Getting ready to ship v0.1.13? You don't need a parade or a linkedin post, but you do need to make sure your audience understands the changes. Have your product or ...Read More

While a product may technically be ready for launch, it doesn't necessarily mean it's market-ready. The key to addressing this lies in the quarterly planning process, which involves reviewing the roadmap and tiering the launches. Larger, more impactful launches are given dedicated moments to shine, allowing them to receive the attention and resources they deserve. On the other hand, smaller feature launches may be grouped together to create maximum impact with the target customer while the minim ...Read More

So first of all, you don't necessarily need to "launch" every release to the market. In my experience with B2B enterprise SaaS, we typically had various product teams on various schedules and even if we got them on a common schedule, it didn't mean that every feature needed to be "launched". Launch to me is the different than release because launch implies something being pushed to the market and there is a GTM engine behind it. And as part of that, this is where the role of the marketer is so v ...Read More

Correct, a release does not equal a launch. I get it. When your product team is working in two-week sprints, it may be overwhelming if you're not used to it, especially when your product and R&D team are proud of what they are delivering (as they should be) and want more to announce it to the world. There are two important things to remember, and you already nailed the one: A release doesn't equal a launch What is the full story? Sometimes, a release contains an item that may warrant its own ...Read More