Sprint Planning for Product Launches

I’ve led significant products and successfully brought them to the finish line. Every time I take on a massive product, the first thing I do is plan for the pre-launch and post-launch activities. I brainstorm with product, UX, engineering, and QA teams to list all the different areas, milestones, risks, and dependencies. When building a new product or introducing significant enhancements, there are hundreds of things to track and align to ensure a timely launch and avoid getting stuck in an endless development cycle. Remember, coding-related activities contribute only 30% to a product's success. The remaining 70% comes from ideation, planning, communication, and adoption. Here are some of the crucial activities I focus on when I start working on a product launch: 1. Visualize the Go-Live Understand this: at this stage, most teams don’t even have a running product or final mockups yet. But we do have a high-level understanding of what it will look like. So, we start by imagining the change already in the hands of our users. Imagine the go-live day and map out every activity that comes to mind. This includes: - Product is live for consumers - Stakeholders are communicated with - A go-live support center is established - Customers and support teams are well-educated and informed Think about users, - What are they feeling? - What are they missing? - What questions do they have? - What challenges are they facing? - What do we wish we had done differently? We ensure that our entire team—engineering, product, support, marketing—knows how to support and communicate with both internal and external users about the new changes. 2. Visualize the Pre-Go-Live Map out every activity leading up to go-live. What needs to happen right before go-live? This includes: - Coding is completed - Extensive testing is conducted - Preparation for deployment - Production infrastructure is configured - Education, training, and pre-go-live communication 3. Create a Master List These brainstorming sessions result in a master list of activities—from initial development to launch. This list ensures we cover every critical step, such as: - UX design - Development - In-sprint testing - DevOps activities - Regression testing Additionally, it includes activities related to: - Risk management - Dependencies - Communication - Education & training Remember to balance the big picture with the details. We use JIRA to plan and track our day-to-day work. It’s invaluable for tracking details, but it can also be overwhelming. That’s why we need a high-level view with milestones, dependencies, and potential risks. This top-down planning approach—working backward from the launch to where we are today—has transformed how I manage and deliver big initiatives, and it can do the same for you. What approach do you follow when planning a significant initiative? Let’s discuss.

🚀 As a Product Owner boost Efficiency & Free Up Time for Strategic Leadership. Use these AI-driven prompts to streamline your daily work as a Product Owner, eliminating time-consuming tasks and focusing on what truly matters—strategy, decision-making, and delivering customer value. Use this AI Cheat sheet to: 🔗 Clarify Roles & Responsibilities: Need to delegate tasks effectively? Try this: "Create a RACI matrix for [Product Name] to define team roles and responsibilities. Suggest a structured approach to ensure Product Owners, Engineers, Designers, and Stakeholders understand their contributions at every stage." AI helps establish clear accountability, ensuring everyone is aligned and focused on their key tasks. 🔗 Define & Align Product Goals: Ensure your product vision supports business success: "Craft a clear and compelling product goal for [Product Name], ensuring alignment with both user needs and business objectives. Break it down into quarterly milestones, using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals and KPIs to track progress and success." This helps you maintain focus and alignment across teams with measurable, actionable goals. 🔗 Prioritize the Backlog Efficiently: Overwhelmed by an ever-growing backlog? Try this: "Use the WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) framework to prioritize backlog items for [Product Name]. Provide a scoring model based on business value, time criticality, risk reduction, and effort to ensure efficient prioritization." This transforms backlog management into a data-driven, objective process, helping you focus on high-impact tasks. 🔗 Optimize Agile Processes & Sprint Planning Need a structured sprint execution plan? Try this: "Outline an Agile sprint success framework for [Product Name]. Define sprint planning, key deliverables, acceptance criteria, and stakeholder feedback loops to ensure iterative progress." This helps create a smooth sprint workflow without manual effort. 🔗 Engage Stakeholders with Tailored Insights: Struggling to keep diverse stakeholders aligned? Try this: "Generate a stakeholder communication plan for [Product Name] using the Stakeholder Matrix. Categorize stakeholders by interest and influence, and suggest the best communication approach for each group. Ensure clarity, engagement, and strategic alignment." This helps you deliver the right information to the right people-without wasting time on unnecessary details. 🔗 Optimize Release Planning & Execution with Clear Roadmaps: Struggling to communicate release plans clearly? Try this: "Develop a high-level release roadmap for [Product Name] covering the next [X] quarters. Include major features, dependencies, risks, and key milestones, ensuring alignment with business objectives and user needs." This delivers a structured, easy-to-follow plan to keep all stakeholders aligned and informed throughout the release cycle [More in comments..] ⚡ Embrace AI & save time 🙋🏻♂️ 𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰

Do product launches feel like a last-minute scramble? Here's how to fix it. For Company X, the only thing consistent about product launches was that they were delayed, often by weeks. Each delay pushed back revenue, annoyed prospective customers, and frustrated the sales team. The teams were left rushing to pull together last-minute go-to-market materials. What was going wrong? The product team stopped once the product was built. They were time-pressured and had to get straight onto the next piece of work. They knew the marketing team handled messaging and they didn't have time for a big handover at the end of the project. It was unclear who was responsible for pulling together materials, like screen grabs, features and benefits. Sound familiar? Here's the fix: 🚀 Start launch planning at the beginning of the project. Involve reps from marketing, CX, and support in the kick off meeting and agree what ongoing involvement is needed up front. 🚀 Collaborate in parallel. By starting launch planning early, you eliminate a handoff. Marketing gets all the information they need and can work in parallel. Both product and marketing enjoy efficiency benefits, and the product launches on time. 🚀 Share meaningful show & tells. Invite stakeholders to regular demos (tailor the content to meet their needs). A great demo doesn't only show functionality; it prepares, elicits feedback, and gets buy-in. When I helped this company change their approach, their launches became timely and far more effective. Marketing had better messaging, meaning the product landed better with customers. The noise from exec stakeholders disappeared. --- If this sounds familiar, let's talk (just drop me a DM). I help time-strapped CTOs & CPOs build collaborative, effective product teams that deliver impact. You don't have to do it all alone.