What systems/tools do you swear by for product launches to keep all stakeholders informed and engaged?

GTM kickoff meeting: It is absolutely essential to get all the right stakeholders in the same room to get on the same page around what we're doing, why, by when, and with which owners. I like to have my team run these meetings roughly three months before a given launch and use them as an opportunity to share out a preliminary GTM strategy they've developed in partnership with the product manager. The goal of the meeting is to provide a concrete rough draft detailing strategy and assets and timel ...Read More

As a fully distributed / remote company, we operate slightly uniquely than other companies - the two biggest differences are 1) we don't use email and 2) everything by default is public to the entire company. Instead of email, we publish everything on our intranet, which is naturally powered by WordPress, and it's also public to the entire company. The intranet is essentially hundreds of WordPress(.com) sites, which we call P2s after the theme they run. P2 is available for anyone to use https:// ...Read More

I am very biased in this case because my company, Atlassian, makes tools that help with this. For example, we are heavy users of Confluence and for each product launch we have a page outlining the steps, ownership, deadlines, etc. related to each activity of the launch. This page is shared across teams and anyone can see it and understand what's going on.  In this Confluence page we can also embed specific Jira tickets that the product team is using to manage their deliverables for the launch, w ...Read More

I wish I could say I have some secret weapon tool that's truly magical, unfortunately, I am just a Google Docs power user. More broadly, I should say that keeping stakeholders engaged comes more from a tight operating cadence than just a tool. This boils down to: 1. Have a clear goal and vision.  2. Tell the appropriate people about it (ie., inform the right folks, and designate the responsible parties so it's clear who's doing what.) 3. Have a regular operational meeting cadence. Meetings, done ...Read More

I use three main tools to ensure all teams are aligned and engaged: Google Sheets, Slack and Notion. In addition, I make sure to schedule weekly / bi-weekly meetings with relevant stakeholders to prioritize tasks, define new ones and analyze performance of current activities. Below is a breakdown of how I use the tools at different stages of product launch:  Launch tiers: to categorize launch tiers I use a launch level matrix that I share with relevant stakeholders using Google sheets.  Launch P ...Read More

Till very recently we used to depend on: Microsoft Teams: For cross-functional communication. We create multiple groups on teams: with senior leadership for approvals, with functional heads for alignment, with cross-functional team members for preparing the deliverables Google Docs: For knowledge management such as sharing briefs, product docs etc. Google Sheets: For basic project managing launch communications But now I’m building a Notion based Asana alternative for PMMs to integrate communica ...Read More

There are 3 that I couldn’t live without:Total Project Manager (TPM): This is the “quarterback” of the launch, they own the master launch plan, ensure dependencies are captured, establish alignment & drive accountability. When I was at Salesforce, we assigned a TPM for Dreamforce every year from within the PMM team and it was a key to a successful launch across the exec keynote, breakout sessions, analyst briefings, web & more. Workstream DACI: This is a comprehensive list of the various ...Read More

In the past we've used things like Google Sheets/docs, but for the past 18 months or so we've started using Coda and it's been a game changer. We do all our launch planning in Coda, which means there is one 'source of truth' where all stakeholders can see progress, timelines, who's responsible for what etc. This has been much easier than our previous world of having loads of different docs and no one ever knowing where anything is! I actually published a template of our launch plan in Coda , whi ...Read More