Change Management Strategies For New Product Releases

If you deploy it, they will come. Nope. They won’t. Too many companies release new features and assume customers will just find them, use them, and love them. Reality? Half the time customers don’t even know the feature exists. New product ≠ instant adoption. If you want customers to actually use what you’ve built, you need a rollout strategy. If you are getting ready to release and roll out new product into your software, here’s how to do it right: 1️⃣ Announce with intention Don’t bury it in release notes. Create a clear, customer-facing announcement that explains what it is and why it matters. 2️⃣ Educate customers Offer videos, walkthroughs, and guides tailored to different learning styles. 3️⃣ Enable through practice Run webinars, workshops, or sandbox sessions where customers can actually try it. 4️⃣ Empower champions Identify and activate customer advocates who can showcase real use cases. 5️⃣ Measure adoption Track who’s using it, how, and what value they’re seeing. Use that feedback to refine. 6️⃣ Keep reinforcing Fold it into business reviews, customer stories, and ongoing comms so it becomes part of the core product experience. If you don’t guide customers to it, your ‘big release’ is just another hidden button. How does your company roll out new features today? What have you seen work really well?

Product marketing should be brought in at the beginning of the process, not the end! And if you don't have a PMM, you should do the thinking they would from the start. Too many teams do this: → An idea is prioritized → They explore the problem space → Engineers develop it, teams test it, and… → Right before release, they bring in marketing But how can you expect a successful go-to-market when the people responsible for messaging and customer adoption had no involvement until the end? This “release-first” thinking results in: 1. Disconnected messaging that doesn’t resonate with the target audience 2. Sales teams scrambling to understand the product feature 3. Poor adoption rates Here’s what needs to happen instead: • PMMs should be involved from the beginning • They should be collaborators not just spectators • They should enter in the research phase and stay involved When PMMs are involved early with the PMs - or the team is acting like a PMM - here’s what you’ll nail: 1. Research → Understand market dynamics, buyer needs, and competition before building the product 2. Strategy → Develop clear positioning, segmentation, and pricing that aligns with both users and the business 3. Enablement → Equip internal teams (sales, support, marketing) with the knowledge and tools to crush GTM 4. Customer and Market Launch → Ensure a smooth rollout with consistent messaging across internal and external audiences 5. Post-Launch → Track adoption, gather feedback, and iterate based on real-world performance So stop just releasing things, and start launching them. If you want to learn more about how to do this well, check out my deep dive with Jason Oakley: https://lnkd.in/eB7s6umA Build intentionally → Launch strategically → Win consistently

You're not just delivering a project You're delivering a behavior shift. A new system, process, or tool means nothing if no one uses it. Except most project plans stop at launch. Not adoption. If you're a PM, you're also a change manager. Here's 3 tips to build for behavior AND delivery: ☝ Define what's changing for the end user Every project introduces friction. New steps. New tools. New habits. Map the real impact. Not just the shift in duties, but the human change. ✌ Bring people in early Change lands smoother when people see themselves in the solution. Co-design communications + plans with users. This will make them champions rather than critics. 🤟 Reinforce even after launch The project isn't done at go-live. Change management doesn't just happen at the end either. It's a living process, so plan for training, support, feedback loops, and follow-ups. That's where real adoption happens. Deliverables don't manage change. People do. Make sure to build behavior change into your projects so they're successful. 🤙

After launching a new product for a $4B company… …here are my top 5 takeaways👇 1️⃣ Stakeholder management is everything. Communicate early and often (even before GA). I like to create a public slack channel and post weekly updates to keep people in the loop. Even if you don’t have much to share, it makes other departments feel part of the launch. Plus, it keeps you from recieving urgent slack DMs saying “omg we’re launching soon, how does (department) play a role in this?” I’ve received too many of those to count! 😅 Being proactive helps a ton! 2️⃣ Use persona data to inform positioning and messaging. Persona research is key - let the customer tell you about the product in their own words. Then, use that language in your PMF. I hypothesized that marketing teams would benefit from the product more - boy was I wrong! Nothing like a good customer interview to humble you. 🤣 3️⃣ Trust your partners. As a Product Marketer, it can be hard to sit back and trust others to execute on their specialty. But you must! Just trust that your foundational information (PMF, personas, etc) have given them the key to success. 🙏 4️⃣ Set your hypothesis before ANY execution. For example: “We hypothesize that this new product will be an organic growth lever” OR “We hypothesize that introducing this new product as a separate product will increase revenue by X%”. 👩🔬 From this hypothesis, you can shape the GTM strategy. If you’re looking for growth, focus your efforts inside the product and on acquisition. If your goal is more revenue, you might focus more on sales enablement and expansion. 5️⃣ Create visibility. I often feel like product marketing operates in a bubble. Product thinks you do general marketing, Marketing thinks you speak for the product, and Sales thinks you just design one-pagers. 🤦♀️ I find kickoff calls and BOM lists to be the most helpful with aligning everyone on what PMM drives vs executes on. Did I miss anything? 👀 #productmarketing #productlaunch

Most product teams celebrate the product launch. They shouldn't. Here’s what usually happens: A team ships a shiny new feature. They high-five. Then sprint straight into building the next one. But features don’t create value just by existing. That’s exactly what happened on a team I worked with years ago. We launched a brand new feature that we thought everyone would love — a huge engineering effort. But weeks later, sales didn’t pitch it. Support didn’t know how to explain it. And users? Confused, or unaware it even existed. We built it. But it never landed. And here's why: 🎯 Real impact happens after the launch. If you’re not enabling GTM teams to sell it… If you’re not helping support teams explain it… If you’re not learning what’s working and what’s not… You’re not done. You’re just getting started. The shift? From: "We shipped it—what’s next?" To: "We shipped it—how do we make it stick?" Here’s how: ✅ Empower internal teams -> Arm GTM with positioning, use cases, and objection handling -> Run enablement sessions with real customer scenarios- > Provide internal FAQs and demo scripts that evolve with feedback ✅ Track adoption and feedback -> Track the key metrics that matter -> Capture qualitative insights from sales calls and support tickets -> Segment feedback by persona to uncover hidden blockers ✅ Reinvest—or ruthlessly cut what’s not working -> Double down on features driving real outcomes -> Sunset or simplify features that confuse or underdeliver -> Use a “feature scorecard” to guide resource allocation Final thought: Launch is step 1. Stickiness is the real finish line. -- 👋 I’m Ron Yang, a product leader and advisor. Follow me for insights on product leadership + strategy.

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.