The last post focused on the 3 most likely reasons new products fail during the pre-build stage. You get it wrong from the beginning it is almost impossible to end up getting it right.
But even if you get that first part right – there are plenty of potholes to flatten your tires as you start the design and development stage. These are the 3 most likely reasons your new product will fail once you start the build-out.
1) You don’t get in front of customers early enough. I advocate for getting in front of customers even before you begin to build out, but plenty of people like to wait until there is something ‘tangible’. Fine – but don’t wait until it is built. Get in front customers (the ones you are actually building for NOT your friends, see #2 in previous post) with wireframes and then designs. Plenty of ‘oops’ have been found in early stage testing – saving time, money and reputation.
2) Scope creep. This is the holy grail of product failure! Everyone has an opinion and an idea for a feature to add. This can be squelched in two ways. Remember #1 in the last post – if you have a value proposition most ‘ideas’ will be filtered out because they don’t add to the true value of the product. The other is discipline. You should have a specific plan that details why only X number of features and functions are in each stage (the answer is both for simplicity and to grow incrementally). Learn to say ‘no’ – even to top management.
3) You don’t plan enough time to fail and pivot. In the last post I talked about the launch getting too much of the focus – here is where it can truly cripple a product’s chance at success: the date certain. That is the date the product has to launch – usually for the wrong reasons. Dates are an element that everyone thinks they can control, so it’s the easiest one to focus on. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a date certain. Just be sure there is a buffer zone in the build-out that allows for situations where a major change could be made to ensure the product’s success.