Timeline management for product or program launches

After being a project manager in the digital marketing industry for 10 years, I’m pretty sure I know a thing or two about launching things. So here are some ideas on how to tame the timeline monster and the task dragon…

When it comes to launching a product or program, there’s usually a deadline, the date you start working, and how long you need to accomplish all the steps. The best way to plan your timeline is to reverse engineer it from the release date. Of course, this release date has to be reasonable, not two weeks from today, but know that you can compress and/or overlap some tasks on your timeline so you don’t absolutely have to have the “ideal” amount of time to bring everything to perfection (which is overrated).

Your launch date can be affected by many factors: your target market’s schedule and lifestyle (is the middle of summer a good time if you want to attract busy moms whose schedule may be filled with taking the kids from a side to side?), your own marketing calendar, the seasonality of your offers and, of course, your own schedule, such as travel, vacations and family obligations.

If you start today, your reasonable launch date should be at least 8 weeks away for a product that’s relatively small in scope, and at least 10-12 weeks away if it’s more ambitious. Then work backwards from the launch date to plan the tasks and milestone. If everything falls into place with time to spare, great. If it turns out that after writing down your ideal schedule, you should be starting 2 weeks ago… don’t panic! You can usually find a few tasks that you can work on simultaneously or in parallel, or compress the timeline for a couple of deliverables. If you do this, you just need to make sure your schedule, your workload, and your sanity allow for a more aggressive work schedule. Otherwise, you may just need to go back to the release date and see if you can get it down a few days to make room.

Keep in mind that your project plan or schedule must be a living document and must be able to adapt as your project evolves in order for your schedule to meet your project objective. Use it as a reality check, and if you’re not meeting milestones, it may be an indication that you need to reassess your expectations, change the way you work, or see if there’s anything holding you back. down and take the necessary action.