The Flywheel / Development / 08 Releases
Releases
Get it ready for launch: versions, released to small circles, compared.
The tool for this step
The Launchpad
Get it ready for lift-off. Prepare what's built for launch: release versions to small circles of people, compare them, and pick the one that's ready.
What it is
Releases gets it ready for launch. This is not the launch itself; that is Marketing. It is the checks and test runs on the pad: versions, released to small circles of people, compared, and the best one picked.
Each version has a number and a list of what changed. Different circles get different versions; you watch what people actually do with each, and keep a way back to the last good version.
How to run it
This is the LAUNCH handoff. Marketing starts once a version is ready and someone says go.
What you produce
The Launchpad: get it ready for lift-off. Prepare what's built for launch: release versions to small circles of people, compare them, and pick the one that's ready.
Examples
Two versions of the letter
Version A arrived on the first of the month; version B arrived on a random day with a note saying so. Both circles kept reading, but B's readers wrote back twice as often. B went to Marketing.
Where it goes wrong
- Launching hereA big release from the Launchpad skips Marketing, and the people it's for never hear about it properly.
- Versions you can't tell apartIf nobody knows what changed, nobody can learn from the result.
- Counting sign-upsSign-ups measure curiosity. Repeated, unprompted use measures value.
- No way backIf a version breaks, you need the last good one within minutes, not days.
What it hands on
The Newsroom starts from what the Launchpad made ready.