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Building New Products -
Introduction (Part 1)
SUNDAR RAJAN
3/25/2019
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About me
 Principal PM at Microsoft
 I am an ex-Googler, ex-Investment Banker
 Been with Microsoft >5 years - Shipped E2E product / key scenarios on Bing Ads, Bing Search,
New Product / Market Insights
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Before we start..
These are my views and not the views of my organization
As you can imagine, nature of PM roles varies across the products & business groups
 This is “a way" of building new products not "the way"
There are many different ways to do build new products.
 I consider myself a student of craft! I have a lot to learn!
I have had some success with this method. But there are pitfalls as well. Happy to share my thoughts and hear your feedback!
 Acknowledgements
SVPG, “Inspired” book, PMHQ articles, Innovation Arts / Project Signals, Lean Launchpad, “This is Product Management” podcast and others
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This is part 1 of the 4 part series:
(1) Introduction to New Product Development
(2) Framing the problem
(3) Discovery Process
(4) Rallying the team
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When do you encounter New Product scenarios
 Early Stage Startups
 New product or business opportunity at an enterprise
 Significant changes in product direction
 Significantly large scenarios additions to an existing products
 New company internal tools
 And many more..
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Challenges of New Product Development
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Build, Productization & GTM is a very long, time & resource consuming activity
Original concepts here: https://svpg.com/four-big-risks/
Value Prop
Product
Definition
Build
Productiza
tion
Deploymen
t / Testing
GTM
User
Feedback
Is it valuable to customers?
Is there a viable business?
Is my team & executive sponsor
motivated for the journey?
Does my GTM motion
align across the board?

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Challenges of New Product Development
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Is it valuable to customers?
• Is our product useful?
• Is it better than their existing alternative?
• Is it worth the switching costs?
• Will the customer pay for this?
Is there a viable business?
• Is this a big enough business to go after?
• Will the product align with our sales strategy?
• Does this product impact our brand?
• Are the COGs in control?
• Does this align with broader company strategy?
Is the team motivated for the journey?
• How to manage the morale through the pivots
• How to manage leadership & partner expectations (who expect
roadmaps) while adopting to customer needs?
Original concepts here: https://svpg.com/four-big-risks/
>
Is it usable by customers?
• Can the users figure out the flow?
• Is the visual design optimal?
• Are the colors, icons, space, layout and aesthetic appeal
done rightly?
Is it feasible?
• Can my engineering team deliver in time?
• How do you manage cross team engineering dependencies?

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Key Steps
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Frame the problem
Ensuring executive & partner alignment -
building a shared understanding of the
opportunity and risks
Mitigate risks through Discovery
Mitigate customer, stakeholder &
technology risks through customer
discovery, stakeholder FAQs &
technology prototypes
Rally the team
Rally your executive sponsors, key
partners & development teams through
the pivots!
Fundamental principle: Acknowledge that new innovations fail. Do everything you can to
minimize the risk of failure as quickly as possible!

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Frame the problem!
Work with your executive sponsor and key partner team leaders to ensure everyone is on same page
 What is business rationale for this new product?
 What does success look like?
 Who is our customer segment?
 What problem are we solving for them?
 What are our key risks?
Present the above findings with your development team! Make sure everyone is on same page!
9Please refer to Part IV in Inspired: How to create tech products customers love
Frame the problem

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Mitigate risks through discovery!
Talk to the customer for customer risks! (Not buyers, not customer service, not sales, not partners)
Build prototypes for evaluating feasibility risks!
Build Stakeholder alignment FAQs for internal risks!
Steps for mitigating customer value risks:
 Create a portfolio of customers
 Identify key pain points & needs (Customer Discovery)
 Validate usefulness value props, low fidelity story maps, working prototypes (Product Discovery)
 Validate pay worthiness
 Iterate!!
1 0Please refer to Part IV in Inspired: How to create tech products customers love
Mitigate risks through Discovery

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Rally the team!
Talk to your development team!
Talk to leadership & partner team
 Showcase customer anecdotes
 Showcase synthesized findings & hypothesis progression
 Show new recommendations & open it up for brainstorming
 Talk to the team! Especially to people impacted with Pivot!
 Showcase new Vision & MVP stories to leadership
 Realign the team
1 1Please refer to Part IV in Inspired: How to create tech products customers love
Rally the team

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Its only a start!
 Figure out the business model!
 Launch a successful product and track success metrics
 Continue to listen to customers though customer advisory board, ideas forum, social channels, instrumentation,
customer service & others
 Continue to build hypothesis led A/B experiments
 Grow the team, grow the business
 Face newer challenges from the market place dynamic shifts!
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Questions | Comments | Feedback
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Contact me: sundarrajan.g.s@gmail.com