It kills me when I hear about a product that has failed upon or shortly after launch. Unfortunately, this is not a rare occurrence! A common figure is that 9 out of 10 products fail. Think: New Coke … the photo app called Color.
The real catastrophe of product failure is the time, money, resources and reputations that are wasted – not to mention the crushing of morale of the product teams.
So my plan is to eradicate product failure – by advocating for some simple, upfront thinking and discourse. There are many reasons why products fail (many numerated here on this blog), but in all my years of building new products I have found there are some simple things that can be done early on to mitigate the risk of product failure and optimize user adoption:
1) Know who your target market is
2) Have a strong value proposition
3) Talk to customers early and often
4) Have a single product owner/lead
5) Learn to say ‘no’ to manage scope creep
6) At launch, make clear promises and delivery on them
For more on these attributes of product success, see my short deck on SlideShare: 6 ways to kill your new product.
photo credit: plesasediscuss.com