Before you invest in launch planning

The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. Before you spend anything on launch planning, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• Never launch on a Friday afternoon
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

The mistakes we see most

Have a rollback plan you have actually tested. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Announce it once the thing is verifiably working. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

The short version

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Three things worth confirming about launch planning before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Have a rollback plan you have actually tested — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.