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Jack Goggin
Jack Goggin

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Product Management: AWS Portfolio website - part 3, going to market and finishing the development life cycle

Introduction

In this last blog of the 3 part series I will be detailing how the portfolio website hosted on AWS was 'launched' to 'market' and how you would usually finish a product development life cycle.

Bringing the product to market

"Launch isn't the end of development but rather the beginning of selling" (Chapter 8, Bringing Your Product To Market, The Product Book)

This will be a collaboration between marketing, sales and the Product Manager. The PM's input is for forming strategies, they will know who the product should be aimed at and what the target market will be using, this can be useful guidance for marketing.

A Product Message should be given to communicate value to customers and the problem it solves. It is very important to understand the customer personas before doing this:

  • "The Personal Portfolio Website is the ultimate solution for anyone seeking to verify Jack's skills in product management and software development. It allows them to validate previous work and see tangible proof of the expertise."

When going-to-market (GTM) it is important to be prepared for every event. Like a server crash (this would be dealt with by AWS, that's a main benefit of the cloud) or marketing targeting the wrong outlets. A go-to-market plan should be developed to prevent this:

  • Launch Goals: The goal is to launch the product to the target audience (hiring managers) via LinkedIn, achieve high customer adoption rates, and generate buzz around the product.
  • Product readiness: It will be ensured that the product is ready for launch by conducting thorough testing to identify and fix any issues and ensure that the product meets the customer's needs and expectations.
  • Launch Date: The launch date is set for the first week of February 2023.
  • Launch Type: Full Launch - traditional launch method where the website is made public to everyone at once.
  • Launch Asset Planning: We will create a series of blog posts and a social media post via LinkedIn to accompany the product launch.
  • Post-Launch: We will monitor the product's performance and customer feedback to identify any areas for improvement and address any issues promptly. We will also continue to promote the product and release updates to keep customers engaged and interested.

End of the life cycle

At the end of development, the job is not done for the Product Manager. The team should celebrate but we should also assess how things went:

  • what customers (hiring managers) think of the product
  • did we achieve our set success metrics (number of visits to the webpage, % of hiring managers offering jobs)
  • was the product easy to use?
  • what did the team think of your management and work?
  • recommend what the product/team should do next

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this 3 part series, I'd appreciate any feedback!

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