How can you manage product development risks with tight deadlines?
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Managing product development risks with tight deadlines is a common challenge for product managers. You need to balance the quality, scope, and schedule of your product while avoiding or mitigating potential issues that could derail your project. How can you do this effectively without compromising your vision or your stakeholders' expectations? Here are some tips to help you navigate this tricky situation.
The first step is to identify and assess the risks that could affect your product development process. These could be related to technical, market, user, or organizational factors. For each risk, you should estimate its likelihood, impact, and severity, and rank them according to their urgency and importance. This will help you focus on the most critical risks and allocate your resources accordingly.
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Sagar More
💡 10x Top LinkedIn Voice ✍️ Author 🗄️ Enterprise Technology Architect 🌟 Digital Transformation Evangelist 🚀 DevSecOps, SRE & Cloud Strategist 🎙️ Public Speaker 🗣 Guest Lecturer 🎓 1:1 Coach 🤝
Effectively navigating tight deadlines in product development involves a strategic approach to risk management, beginning with the precise definition and prioritization of potential risks. By conducting a comprehensive risk assessment, teams can identify and understand potential obstacles, enabling the establishment of mitigation strategies and contingency plans. Prioritizing risks based on their impact and likelihood ensures focused efforts on the most critical challenges, fostering a proactive and agile response to the dynamic landscape of product development. This strategic risk management framework not only safeguards timelines but also enhances the overall resilience and adaptability of the development process.
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Will Snow
Head of Digital Product @ Yum! Brands
In my experience, I've kept a risk register and try to keep it up to date throughout the process. In the daily standups, anyone on the team can raise risks. Sometimes, they affect your projects. Sometimes they don't. Having a log of the possible threats to your work often helps you identify bottlenecks early on. Giving you a proactive approach rather than a reactive one.
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Joao Moita
Founder | Product Manager | Building the Product Weekend 🚀
For each risk, it's important to create a Risk Matrix, where you plot the likelihood versus impact for each identified risk. From this you will visually see the ones to tackle first. Make sure to do this collaboratively with your team.
The second step is to communicate and collaborate with your team, stakeholders, and customers. You should share your risk assessment and plan with them, and solicit their feedback and input. You should also establish clear roles and responsibilities, and set realistic expectations and milestones. By involving them in your decision-making and problem-solving, you can build trust, alignment, and support for your product.
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Joao Moita
Founder | Product Manager | Building the Product Weekend 🚀
Risk assessments can be super boring, especially for builders with an "ask for forgiveness, not permission" mentality. Make sure to create engaging dynamics where everyone contributes with inputs from their areas of expertise and go in-depth on what could happen if things go wrong.
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Anita T.
Agile|| Program || Product
Having regular connect during IRAAD keeps everyone align on what risks needs to be mitigated. The group collaborates to discuss ,lays Mitigation plan and assign owner. The owner keeps the group apprised on the development of risks till closure. As this is collaborative effort , everyone is align towards plan and focus on remediation .
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Gabrielle Hayes
Empowering Product Pros to Embrace Career Authenticity | Career Coach | Public Speaker
Step 1 to effectively communicating - understand what the recipient cares about and needs to know to make a decision with information. For your stakeholders, what’s the impact to the budget or the timeline. For your team members, what’s the impact to their workload. For your customers, how much longer do they have to wait until their problem is solved. A full risk assessment is often overlooked and underutilized. If you are facing a risky situation, communicate to meet the needs of the recipients and then focus your efforts on your next steps.
The third step is to adapt and iterate based on your feedback, data, and learning. You should monitor your progress and performance, and measure your outcomes and impact. You should also test your assumptions and validate your solutions with your users and customers. By doing this, you can identify and address any gaps, issues, or opportunities that arise during your product development process.
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Joao Moita
Founder | Product Manager | Building the Product Weekend 🚀
Have a regular cadence of risk review sessions with different people in the teams. Make these shorter and more frequent so that the risks assessed remain top-of-mind. Make sure to review the Risk Register often to update the ones where you've made progress on.
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Matt McGuire
Senior Product Manager | Software Development, SaaS, Data & Analytics | Startup Veteran | ex-SAP
Adapting and iterating based on feedback, data, and learning is crucial. Monitor progress, measure outcomes, and validate solutions with users. This helps identify and address any gaps, issues, or opportunities in the product development process.
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Anita T.
Agile|| Program || Product
The owner follows the remediation plan and keeps the group informed on the progress. If the resolution isnt working , the group circles back and discuss on other alternative. They may consider workaround and review other approaches . While all of this is happening the risk register is always updated to reflect the current state.
The fourth step is to manage your scope and trade-offs. You should have a clear vision and strategy for your product, and a well-defined scope and roadmap. However, you should also be flexible and willing to adjust your scope and priorities based on the changing needs and expectations of your users and customers. You should also be prepared to make trade-offs between quality, scope, and schedule, and communicate them clearly and transparently.
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Joao Moita
Founder | Product Manager | Building the Product Weekend 🚀
Don't say "no". Ask your stakeholders what they'd like to scope out of your roadmap to add any new feature or initiative coming from changing needs and expectations.
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Devesh Gombar
Product Manager | Gamification, Ad-Tech, E-commerce & Data Infrastructure | Tepper School of Business
Effectively managing scope and trade-offs is critical to navigating product development risks under tight deadlines - Dynamic Scope Adjustment: Prioritize core functionality, allowing flexibility for additional features based on risk assessment. Value-Focused Trade-offs: Employ prioritization methods to ensure essential high-value features are developed first. Risk-Value Assessment: Balance the potential value of features against their associated risks to inform prioritization. Stakeholder Engagement: Involve stakeholders in decision-making, ensuring transparency and collaborative risk mitigation. Iterative Review: Continuously reassess scope and risks, adapting to ensure progress within tight timelines.
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Anita T.
Agile|| Program || Product
In case the mitigation plan isnt working, we need to communicate it to respective party and accept it as Risk . Take inputs from business and decide what factor ( to scope out or timelines/budget ) can be adjusted.
The fifth step is to learn and improve from your experience and feedback. You should review and reflect on your product development process, and identify what worked well and what didn't. You should also collect and analyze feedback from your team, stakeholders, and customers, and use it to improve your product and your process. By doing this, you can enhance your skills, knowledge, and confidence as a product manager.
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Jochem Nuij
Directeur bij Productowner.nl | Linkedin Top Voice (product management) | Auteur Het product owner boek
sounds great in theory, but it´s one of the first things that gets popped your of your calendar, right? There are four possible solutions. 1) find a team member (scrum master?) who has the (mental or agenda) space to make ongoing team improvement a big priority. somebody who will fight for that time in your calendar. 2) do retro lunches. You need to eat, so combine it with a real conversation in another setting. small groups (max 4 people) works best. 3) do self-assessment. Combine walking the dog, going to the gym, or travel time to reflect. Google can help you out with the best questions to ask 4) find a mentor or accountability partner. Somebody who will kick your butt, or - even worse - will stop talking to you if you don't show up.
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Anita T.
Agile|| Program || Product
In Agile, the team continuously strives for improvement through retros at team level. Additionally, at program level , Program Retros are also conducted . This is helpful to share learning and take action items with owner and timeline , which will further improve the product development .
The sixth step is to manage your stress and burnout. Product development is a demanding and rewarding activity, but it can also be stressful and exhausting. You should take care of your physical, mental, and emotional health, and balance your work and personal life. You should also seek support and guidance from your peers, mentors, and coaches, and celebrate your achievements and successes.
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Jochem Nuij
Directeur bij Productowner.nl | Linkedin Top Voice (product management) | Auteur Het product owner boek
Stress management is key. What's the cause? Be completely honest with yourself. I know from experience it is one of three: 1. Good vibes: Are you excited about launching and making users happy? Great. You can do this and keep on rocking. 2. insecurity: Are you afraid that you can't do it? or that an important stakeholder will think less of you? Talk to a mentor or some other senior and independent business professional and share your insecurity. 3. promises: Did you say Yes to something and it turned out to be a No? If you see it coming, raise your hand. "This no longer works for me and the team". Let's discuss. Did the No surprise you? Say you're sorry to your manager and ask what you can do to make it up? (advice: avoid a new deadline)
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Jochem Nuij
Directeur bij Productowner.nl | Linkedin Top Voice (product management) | Auteur Het product owner boek
When it comes to deadlines, your stakeholders will say the deadline is a must-make-date and that delay will not be accepted. In our company, we ask the following questions when a deadline is brought up in an intake or follow-up meeting. 1) What happens if we do not act on this project for the next 100 days? (Cost of doing nothing) 2) What did you promise to who? based on what did you makes these promises? 3) Picture a situation where we would need to double the budget and/or cut the scope in half to make this deadline. What would happen? Be curious and listen to their response. This is NOT about bouncing arguments!! It's about understanding your stakeholders and finding ways to make them successful without the unnecessary time pressure.
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Tony Pagliocco
Chief Product Officer at RAI Digital | Ex-Boeing ✈️| Ex-Hasbro 🕹| Gartner Product Management Community Ambassador 🎓| Agile Evangelist & Data Driven Leader of Best-in-Class Product Teams 👍
To manage product development risks under tight deadlines, one unique approach is to adopt a 'pre-mortem' strategy. Before starting, gather your team to envision a future where the project has failed. Then, work backward to identify potential pitfalls and preemptively address them. This method not only prepares the team for possible challenges but also encourages proactive thinking and risk mitigation. It's a way to sorta hedge your bets.
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Ali Raza
Co-Founder, COO at Linkstar & Oliv | Driving Product Innovation, Growth, and Leadership | PLGC™️| PAC™️ | PSC™️
Managing product development risks with tight deadlines requires a strategic approach. Prioritize risks, fostering transparent communication and collaboration with everyone involved henceforth include everyone from the start when you are just at the PRD writing stage. Constantly monitoring progress. Effective scope management involves flexibility and clear communication of trade-offs. Significantly, stress and burnout management is the key so make sure you're having a good time to ensure sustained peak performance.