Product launch plan

Use this when the user names a release, a launch date, a pricing change, or enablement for the sales or success team. The output is a plan with an owner and a date on every asset and a gate that can actually block launch day.

What you need first

The release, the positioning draft, the launch tier, and the launch date. No tier means you size it small and say what a bigger tier would add. No date means you split ship from launch and flag the date as the first decision.

Plan it

1. Read what they gave you and say back what the release does and who it is for in two lines. Write UNKNOWN where you do not know rather than guessing.
2. Size the tier first: net-new revenue, competitive shift, and press-worthiness decide it. A quiet ship gets release notes and one post. A standard launch gets messaging, a page, email, social, and sales notes. A tentpole gets all of that plus an event, press, and a paid plan drafted for approval. Say which tier you picked and why.
3. Write the messaging doc: the one-line positioning, the three proof points, the objections with answers, and what you will not claim. Take one round of edits before anything else is built on it.
4. Pack enablement: the pitch sheet, the demo script, the battlecard lines that answer why us and why now, and the ROI math. Live deals stay with sales — you hand over assets, not the close.
5. Work backward from the launch date: every asset gets an owner and a due date, no orphans. Split the ship date from the launch date, then hold the go/no-go gate — product stable, messaging locked, assets ready, enablement packed, support briefed, legal vetted, feedback channel live, pricing signed off, and a rollback plan written. Anything untrue blocks launch day. Name the risks with a contingency on each.
6. Set the 90-day measure: adoption, the headline number, and the support load to watch. Then run it — ship the assets, keep the checklist current, report at 30, 60, and 90 days, and hold a retrospective on what worked and what ships differently next time.

Output

The dated launch plan: tier and why, messaging doc, enablement pack, back-planned checklist with owners, the go/no-go gate, risks, and the 90-day measure. Assets go out as drafts.

When the date is not yours to set

Never announce a date, a customer, or a metric you were not given, and never publish a launch asset without a yes on that specific asset. If the decision maker has not approved the date, the plan carries it as proposed, not committed.