You are a PM and you are about to enter the product launch meeting with all stakeholders. How would you prepare for that meeting?

What kind of a product is this? Operational product

Who are the primary users? Operations team

How far is the go live date? 4 weeks

SInce this product is primarily meant for oeprations team and we are one month away from the expected launch date, I will first try to back calculate the current status assuming no dealy as on date.

D -> Launch date

D-7 -> Production dry run

D-14 -> Staging UAT

D-21 -> E2E integration testing

D-28 (current week) -> Staging testing in progress, dev is completed and team is busy fixing the bugs identified during the testing

Based on this current stage, I will define my agenda as below for a 60 mins call -

Objective - Progrss update and next set of actions

Attendees - Product head, Engg head, Design head, Ops head, Ops managers, Legal, Marketing, Finance

• Reading (5 mins)
• High level project status update (5 mins)
• Plan for this week (5 mins)
• Prepare a product demo for the stakeholders (15 mins)
• Feedback (5 mins)
• Propose an early usability testing plan with ops team in staging for early feedback collection (5 mins)
• Dry run plan (5 mins)
• Go live plan (5 mins)
• Q&A (5 mins)
• Buffer time (5 mins)

Finally, I will conclude with action items for next update along with assigned PoCs.

Is there a type of product you'd like me to focus on? Assume no.

Can I use a past experience? Assume yes.

I recently launched a product called meetups. Meetups is a product that allows our customers to organize virtual or in-person meetings with each other. This was a feature that our CEO had chosen to debut in her keynote at our company's public town hall. So the launch had to be really well-executed.

My task was to get everybody excited about meetups, and also empowered with the right information so we could take the product to market and full each of our roles as a team.

I organized a product launch meeting with the following stakeholders:

           1. CEO

           2. Head of marketing + marketing lead

           3. Product marketing lead

           4. Business intelligence lead

           5. Design lead

           6. Engineering lead

I organized the meeting agenda as follows:

           1. Meetups overview and demo

           2. Launch goals, including Meetups success KPIs

           3. Messaging plan, including story and tactics

           4. Launch timeline and run of show

           5. Shoutouts and kudos to each time for their work so far

All of these materials had been sent to the team prior to the meeting.I also met with each stakeholder individually to give them an overview and hear their concerns prior to the meeting.

 So I used the first 10 mins of the meeting to review the materials, and the remaining 35 mins to address any questions, concerns, or risks raised by the team. There was one question about push notifications versus email notifications to notify members to update their app, which we debated and resolved.

As a result, we had a meeting where we were be able to get excited and aligned as a team, and had a very successful Meetups rollout. To date, 78% of our customers have used the Meetups product, and we've found that Meetups usage is a strong predictor of customer retention.

Product launch meeting is a Big day for any product manager after toiling hard for several months to weeks.

A product manager will be aware of this day coming and would have started preparation in advance.

1. In-and-out quality assurance of the product. Any major bugs of high priority should be resolved in advance.

2. A presentation slide deck which will cover

a) problem the product is trying to solve

b) potential audience of the product

c) key features of the product

d) advantages it has over the existing products in the market

 e) product operations knowledgebase/ manual

f) GTM strategy of the product

3. A recoreded video of the product demo. It would be supportive incase if hands-on demo fails or anyother reason

Avoid stress during the product launch as it might affect the presentation and also the engineering teams. Nice-to-have features in the last minute should be handled cautiously as it should not affect the product's MVP. We can also highlight the upcoming roadmap for the product. Expect possible questions for the audience and be prepared for the same to avoid disappointment.

Thanks.

Answeringn a Google behavioral question like this would call for the following...

ME: What is the product that we ar launching? What is the state of the product launch? Are we close to launch? How close are we to launch?

Some more questions to the interviewer: 1) Are we launching WW 2) Is it a first time launch or enhancement of existing products? 3)Who are my stakeholders in the meeting?

Interviewer: You are launching a new products, yes WW, and stakeholder will be engineering team and other partners team(you think which team should be present). We are 3 weeks close to launch.

Me- As per my understanding, if we are 3 weeks close- then

a. we should be good with Dev testing and its WW, QA should be 90% done

b. I would include product marketing and sales for GTM, as that something should be taken care of before launch

c.Include Legal/PR in the meeting (could be optional, if I have already a legal/PR process separately for my company)

d. I will include any other stakoholder,such as if I have tech partnered with other team in the same company. Any dependent Tech team etc.

e. reporting is something we should considerin before launching, include data engineering team

 

Considering this is 45 min:

Lets define the objective of the meeting: Unblock any roadblocks, making sure we are not missing ay elements to launch, taking ownership of any orphan tasks or outstanding items.

Lets define what should we talk in the meeting so that I can list the items that I should be preparing before meeting:

1) Status of each items completed- 5 min

2)Roadblocks if any (10min)

3)Demo (In dev or prod if ready, if not when can we expect)- 15min

4)Incremental launch- success criteria- 5min

5)Rollback plan-5min

6)GTM strategy, content, and assigned persons to follow up-5 min if time left 10 min

 

So things I should be prepared for before meeting 1) If demo ready, then able to do it with stakehodlers 2) Indentify gaps and roadblocks from engineering team, along with proposed solutions 3) Incremental launch criteria and roll back plans to mitigate risks 4) GTM activities status so far-gaps and assigned POCs