4 Practical Product Management Checklists

Checklists are a powerful tool to guide us at stressing times, they are used in all fields of work ranging from surgery to disaster response, to product management.

One of the most stressful tasks that can be asked of a product manager, is the orchestration of a product launch. Product launches are very hard to get right, as most of us product managers, are more used to taking on already existing products. Checklists for product launches then come to the rescue: but what about the other phases of a product life cycle?

Products are living organisms: they are conceived, born, they grow and change, and eventually they decline and die. In this post I prepared 4 different Trello boards for you to clone and use for each different product phase. The boards include basic tasks, thoughts, meetings or documents that I think should be tackled in each product life cycle phase. They are by no means complete but you get the picture: at least they get you thinking and you can add more or remove unnecessary items.

Product Start

This is maybe the most exciting phase for any product manager. There is a group of users who has a problem, there is a need you or your team think that can be solved. It’s time to get going and do some research, get traction, make your idea a true product proposal.

Clone this Product Start board

Product Launch

This may be the most time and energy consuming phase you will have to go through. You have a product that is ready to go to market, you already tested with users and are confident it can continue to do well: it’s time to bring the world’s attention to this work.

Clone this Product Launch board

Product Growth

The most familiar phase of all, yet there are some aspects in this phase, that are some times overlooked, such as establishing good check points to ask yourself: is this product really going in the right direction, at the right speed? As soon as you launch or even during launch (if you can spare some more time) think of those aspects to set up.

Clone this Product Growth board

Product Sunset

Nobody wants to get in this phase, and it is often overlooked and can go as badly as a poor product launch. Sunsetting a product is an art as much as it is to launch a product, and it deserves care and commitment from the entire product team.

Clone this Product Sunset board

May your list checking begin!