Product Management For Dummies

Chapter 13

Gearing up for Your Product Launch: The Qualify Phase

IN THIS CHAPTER

Discovering how success is built on qualifying your product

Running a successful beta test program

Deciding to ship the product

You and your team have been working hard on creating a great product. You identified the target personas, chose the best opportunity, prioritized the features, made challenging trade-offs, and have been in development for quite some time. The next step in the Optimal Product Process is to prepare for running a beta program, getting the near-finished product into customers’ hands, and ensuring that it’s ready to be released to a wide range of customers.

Getting Up to Speed on the Qualify Phase

Many times, you may be tempted to skip or shortcut this phase because of schedule and time constraints, but don’t make this mistake. Use this phase to be absolutely sure the product meets the quality level you need. Then you can be certain the features and benefits it provides are more than adequate for customers to justify paying for the product. Beta testing (along with your own internal quality assurance and testing efforts) lets you know that the product is ready to shine when ...