1. 2014
Murali Erraguntala
www.ProductGuy.in

2. Building New Product – Product Managers Checklist www.ProductGuy.in
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Building New Product – Product Managers Checklist
I have summarized the checklist for Product Manager to successfully build new product. The checklist is continuation of my earlier document uploaded to slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/merragun/new-product-development-my-experiences).
I have separated the checklist from the original document and provided it separately for some quick reference.
All my documents could be downloaded from www.ProductGuy.in/Resources/
Happy Reading!!!
Murali Erraguntala
LinkedIn| Slideshare| Twitter| Blog| Email

3. Building New Product – Product Managers Checklist www.ProductGuy.in
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Ideation Phase Checklist
Idea validation
 What is the product idea?
 Is there product – market fit?
Release timing/ Product Eco-system
 Is the product tentative release timeline either too late or too early to market?
 Is the product eco-system conducive to success of new product?
o Is the product dependent on any macro factors for its success?
o Does the product belong to pipes or network# category?
o If network, does the product has to create a network effect (Mobile OS aka producer) or dependent on network effect (apps aka consumer)?
Profitability
 Who is the target customer?
 Can the target customers afford to buy the product?
 Are the target customers willing to buy the product?
 What is the total market size? What is the penetration rate?
 Is the market big enough to make sufficient margins?
Organization fit
 Is the new product aligned with goals and strategies of the organization
 Does the organization have the capabilities to build the new product?
 Can the organization excel at creating value (building product), communicating value (marketing) and capturing value (selling)?
#http://www.wired.com/2013/10/why-business-models-fail-pipes-vs-platforms/

4. Building New Product – Product Managers Checklist www.ProductGuy.in
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Business Review Checklist
Market Analysis
 Is it a growing market?
 What is the potential impact of not having new product(s)?
 Who is the target customer? How is organization positioned to reach the target segment?
 What is the total addressable market?
 Where is the current product positioned in the product life cycle?
Product Analysis
 What are the high level specifications of new product(s)?
 What is the defining attributes of the new product?
 What is the platform and product line strategy? Are we leveraging existing platform or creating newer platform?
 What is the total cost incurred to develop new product(s)?
 Make or buy decision?
o If make?
 What is the competence required to build new product(s)?
 Does Organization have such competency or does it have to be acquired?
o If buy?
 Are their potential vendors to acquire?
 How much does it cost to acquire?
 What is the release date for the new product(s)?
o In case of multiple products, outline the product line strategy along with release dates for each of the product
o In case of multiple products, outlining a single platform strategy for all the product would be more ideal
Competitive Analysis
 How would new product(s) be positioned against competition? What would be vector of differentiation of new product(s)?
 How the competition is currently positioned?
 Are we imbibing any new technology into the new product(s)?
 How potentially could competitive landscape change before the new product is released?
Financial Analysis
 What is the ROI of the new product(s)? How much revenues could be forecasted by new product(s)?

5. Building New Product – Product Managers Checklist www.ProductGuy.in
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Requirements Gathering Checklist
Foundation for the PRD
 Why customers need new product(s)?
 How does the customer needs evolve?
 How does technology evolve?
 How does market evolve?
 Who are the customers of tomorrow?
 What are customer needs of tomorrow?
Defining attributes
 What are the key value propositions valued most by target customers?
 What are targeted vectors of differentiation?
Drafting requirements
 ‘WHAT’ product features are required, ‘WHY’ they are required?
 Are product requirements actionable?
 Do each of the product requirements elaborated in detail?
 Has the priorities listed for each of the product requirements?
In case of new product to the existing product line
 Do any of the functionalities of existing product line have to be eliminated?
 Is there a need to bring-in any new functionality or new technology to align with customer value proposition and differentiation?
 Do any of the existing functionalities have to be altered to increase the scope or make it better usable?
 What are drawbacks of existing product line that has to be eliminated in new product?
 What should be the synergies between old and new products?
Whole product approach
 What are the non-product attributes that would influence a sale?
 What are the elements of product eco-system?
o Is the new product driving the eco-system or thriving on the eco-system?

6. Building New Product – Product Managers Checklist www.ProductGuy.in
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Monitor Plan Activity Checklist
Non-product assumptions
 Is it still a growing market – Any socio-economic/ regulatory or any other macro factors has stalled the growth?
 Is customer preferences still the same?
o Is customer preferences still aligned with value propositions of the new product?
 Is competition launching better product(s) ahead of us or planning for new product launch?
What are the macro factors that determine the commercial success of the new product?
o Have any of those factors changed during product development phase?
o Do the changes impact the success of new product?
Macro factors can be socio, economic, regulatory, technology etc. For instance regulatory changes might impact the success of the new product. In case of car, increase in fuel prices might hit the sale of cars
Validate all the assumptions periodically and perform unbiased introspection to assess the impact of the changes to the new product

7. Building New Product – Product Managers Checklist www.ProductGuy.in
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Product Planning Checklist Freeze product requirements
 Has the final list of product requirements for 1st release been derived without any ambiguity?
 Does development team have a complete understanding of each and every product requirements that made to the final list?
o Does development team have a complete understanding of why those features are required?
o Does development team have an absolute clarity on the defining attributes of the new product?
 Does the final list of product requirements would provide enough compelling reasons for customers to buy the product?
 Can the final product still meet the revenue projections with planned set of product requirements in 1st release?
Product planning
 Was detailed product development plan derived meticulously?
 Were the risks associated with building new product identified?
o In the event of occurrence of those risks, has mitigation plans been identified?
 Has the assumptions associated with building new product identified?
o Were there plans to validate the assumptions? If so, when and how?
I am talking about product assumptions and not about non- product assumptions. Non-product assumptions are tracked under monitoring plan. Product assumptions are directly related to the product capabilities, functionalities or assumptions. For instance there could be an assumption that integration with specific technology would achieve desired performance

8. Building New Product – Product Managers Checklist www.ProductGuy.in
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Product Development Checklist Product development tracking
 Is the Product Manager periodically reviewing the product development progress with the Program Manager and is he ensuring that the new product development is progressing as per the initial schedule without any deviations?
o In case of deviation from the initial schedule or occurrence of any risk, is the Product Manager well equipped to take well informed decisions (any trade-offs, mitigation plans etc) based on the information available with him?
 Is the product manager periodically reviewing the interim product being built and sharing the feedback without waiting until the final product is built?
o Is the product being built is in accordance with new product vision?
Product Manager activities
 Does the Product Manager have determined the list of activities to be completed before FCS?
 Does the Product Manager have complete awareness of the timeline required to complete each activity and stakeholders involved in the approval process of each of those activities?
 Does the Product Manager have identified the dependency between those activities?
o Has Product Manager identified the start date for each of the activity considering the dependency factor?
Pricing
 What is the pricing model and business model?
 Is the currently proposed pricing model different from earlier models? If so, does the organization have sufficient capability and infrastructure to implement the new model?
 Is the new product priced optimally without leaving any money on the table?
 What is the reference point to compare the pricing (pricing of competitive product or pricing of perceived alternate product)?
 What are the margins, NPV, break-even period etc.?
 Is there any mechanism to validate the efficacy of the product pricing post the product release?
I meant whether product specifications, functionalities and capabilities are being developed as envisaged initially

9. Building New Product – Product Managers Checklist www.ProductGuy.in
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GTM
 What is the value proposition? Can we communicate the value proposition effectively through a TWEET?
 Who are the target customers? What are the available mediums to communicate value proposition to those target customers?
o What is the efficiency of each medium to reach target customers (cost vs reach)?
 What is the budget estimated and what is the budget allocated?
o If budget allocated is less than estimated, apply 80:20 rule
What is the cost incurred for each medium and what % of target customers could be reached
20% of the estimated budget should help reach 80% of the target customers

10. Building New Product – Product Managers Checklist www.ProductGuy.in
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Concluding Thoughts
New product development involves conceptualizing value (Ideation), creating value (Product Development), communicating value (GTM) and capturing value (Product Pricing and Business Models). I have focused on providing checklist as actionable items for various stages of new product development right from ideation till product launch.
I hope the checklist is helpful and I would appreciate your efforts to drop your comments about this document.
Happy Building GREAT Products 