7 Tips for How to Make a Product Launch Checklist and Calendar

Your vision is to launch products and everything magically comes together.

Ideally, you would have a product launch checklist of some sort that could be used for every launch with some slight modifications as needed. Having worked in product management in various industries, these checklists or launch calendars are never an easy task. Several departments are generally involved, with all types of personalities and motivations. Yet somehow, it all needs to come together and all on the same date.

For the purpose of this article, we are going to assume you want to set up a product launch checklist and calendar for repeated use. It’s common to have to make changes to these along the way but starting with something will help tremendously. We will go through why you should do this, the items to consider, and tips on what to watch for.

Why you need a product launch checklist and calendar

This is quite an undertaking so do you really need to do this? Yes. Whether it’s just you, or you have more than yourself working on a project, you need to think about communication and tracking milestones in projects. People will be dependent on other people completing tasks to get started on theirs. If you wing it, roles, tasks, and milestones will be missed and forgotten. Having a checklist and calendar in place helps communication, establishes expectations, and ensures milestones aren’t forgotten. Imagine assuming you can launch in 4 weeks and you failed to realize the material lead times of 10 weeks. You could end up with empty store shelves if you’re not careful.

Steps for making a launch checklist or calendar

1. Determine project priority.

Before you need to use the checklist, you need to determine which projects will be using the checklist. Do this by either scoring the projects and/or running them through net present value (NPV) to determine the ones that will bring the most value to the business.

2. Determine all of the departments and stakeholders and their roles.

You may want to use something like a RASIC chart to list the various people who will be involved as a starting point. You may not need all five roles, but usually, you map out who will be responsible, the approver, the supportive people, the ones who just need to be informed, and consulted in the project across various milestones and you end up with a pretty solid list of people or departments to start with.

3. Figure out the requested launch date.

Starting with the launch date is key for the calendar. You can try using a spreadsheet or template to find the date like this one to back out dates. You may be given the date, it may be requested for you to figure out if it can work, or you may be the one determining the date. I recommend being as specific as you can be. If you leave things vague, it’s much easier to go off track.

4. Once you have the launch date, you need the milestones.

You need to meet with all stakeholders and contributors upfront to determine their major milestones to complete these types of projects and rough estimates for lead times on the ‘standard’ milestones. For example, you know that at every launch, design is going to need 6 to 8 weeks upfront to get the line plan together. You also know that material for samples and testing requires 10 weeks as a standard. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but you need to allow for 10 weeks. You also know that any time you receive or send the product to outside factories, it’s a guaranteed 5 days for shipping you need to build in. These types of lead times are going to help you in backing out the milestone dates and times from that final launch date so you can get a calendar together. You should expect to meet with them a few times as once you try to link every department’s timelines together, you will need to go back and make tweaks.

Launch calendar milestones to include on the checklist:

• The official naming of the product and/or colors
• Development of item numbers in an ERP system/sales tickets or tags
• Bill of materials or BOM
• Marketing or go to market plans
• Communication among teams and the time it takes to do this
• Pre-selling to some or VIP customers
• Sales collateral needs for your team
• Sales training on the product
• Product videos
• Project briefs
• Competitor research
• Timeline for sample development
• Design time
• Billing requirements
• Major meetings and progress or approval checks
• Orders for new equipment or jigs
• Sampling of materials and timeline to receive
• Forecasting and ordering materials
• Brochures or printed materials
• Website design
• Email design
• Production Samples
• Photography for print or website
• Engineering related tasks
• Costing and pricing activities
• Packaging requirements
• Tech packs or technical specs or technical drawing development and approval
• Training of a customer service team
• Quality review
• Testing
• Find the promoters/influencers

5. Assign dates

Now that you have the stakeholders, contributors, and milestones with the standard time it takes, you can begin to assemble a calendar. This is where it gets tricky. You want to make sure that you are very familiar with the milestones and which can overlap and which have dependencies. You really should spend some time with the various departments to learn their pain points, and how they work, even learn the manufacturing process, otherwise, it can be challenging to understand which levers can be pulled when things get delayed so you can still keep the launch on track. You can use software like monday.com where you can select these types of options with things like dependencies and it helps to build your project plan out. Working backward from the due date is best as you will find out if the project is feasible and what you would have to cut to make it work.

6. Schedule the kick-off meeting.

Get the necessary people together to establish the calendar and get buy-in and sign off. You should have a pretty good template at this point to reuse in the near future. You may need to make some tweaks but you should have the people, milestones, and lead times established. This kick-off is the first official step as a team beginning the project.

Tips for developing a product launch checklist and calendar

1. Watch for people who tend to exaggerate lead times.

This is another reason to get really familiar with every piece of the process. There will be times when you have to pull levers and make changes and you need to know exactly how long milestones take. It’s a good time to be a listener and let them do the talking and teaching.

2. After you assemble the calendar, make sure it’s public, communicated, and the necessary people sign off.

You have to have an agreement on the calendar. If you don’t, people will come back when milestones are missed and blame you for not allotting them enough time. They really need to be the ones giving the inputs. This calendar needs to be top of mind all the time. Don’t keep it to yourself.

3. Don’t forget calendar progress check-ins.

It’s easy to get really focused on all of the milestones around the product but you will also need to check-ins to make sure tasks are on track. You have to catch the delays as soon as possible to adapt as needed.

4. Try not to get too overly detailed.

There are likely to be a lot of milestones, and then tasks within those, but I’ve found it best to stick with the higher level as the ones listed in this article and let the various teams manage their internal processes.

5. Make it easy.

If you’re using product management software, make sure people have ample training. I’ve found most people despise these things so don’t expect they will take it upon themselves to learn all about it. If you’re using Excel or Sheets, try to make the calendar as easy to read as possible. As a general rule, the harder it is to make sense of the calendar the less participation you will get.

6. Keep a revision history.

Can’t stress this enough. If you make changes and edits, and you will, you have to keep track of revisions. You want to make sure everyone is on the same version of the calendar, otherwise, you can only imagine how bad that can get.

7. Set the major meetings up early.

You will have various approvals along the way. Make sure these are set early on everyone’s calendars so that these people aren’t traveling or on vacation. You don’t want anything delayed because of that.

In summary, you have to have a product launch checklist and calendar whether you’re working alone or with others on a launch. You don’t want to forget milestones, and you want to set expectations so everyone is working towards the same launch date.

Written by Nicole Hullihen, January 18th, 2022