Launching

Introducing new offerings into the world

There are many celebrated books on launching new products and services in the public sector. They usually have names that include “delivery”, but they really focus on the run-up to launch. They genuflect to user research and assume autonomy and agency on the parts of the launch teams, because they are written by powerful, connected people who are hired to research and launch new offerings under the auspices of other powerful, connected people who grant them that autonomy and agency. After launching their offering, these folks then leave the public sector, off to write their books and tell us all how it should be done.

The HCD Delivery Guide is not one of those books.

In this series, we assume the following:

1. That the hardest work is done by the people who inherit offerings, not those who get to build them from the ground up.
2. That career civil servants are largely a dedicated, driven group, working at the timescale of lifetimes, not fiscal quarters or political terms.
3. That anyone following the Guide series has just enough autonomy or agency to make failure a real option while having just too little to be able to avoid dealing with failure’s fallout.

So while the launch section of the HCD Delivery Guide draws from some of those works, the focus we take is wider than theirs. In HCD Delivery, launching is simply the moment you move from user testing into an open, public offering. Whether that means a website launches, a report is filed, or an email is sent from a new group, the moment of launch is exciting! Through discovery, design, training, and marketing, you’ve arrived at the moment where your offering is open to the world.

Launching should encompass your last few weeks before you go public. If you’ve followed the Guides up until this point, most of the pieces will be in place for a successful launch. Below, find some launch rules to help you through this last bit, and get excited! This is the moment you’ve been waiting for.

Launch rules

Launching is a definitionally convergent phase. In these days or weeks, tighten up gaps in your offering, refine your training, and make sure your marketing tactics are in place. As you approach your first day in the public eye, there are six rules to keep in mind:

1. Keep launch small. It can seem appealing to have a big, ribbon-cutting style launch, but we recommend against this. Although you’ve done everything in your power to build a truly great, human-centered offering, there are inevitably quirks you need to figure out once the offering is in the public’s hands. Instead of a big launch announcement on launch day, we recommend a quiet opening, also known as a “soft launch,” followed by a public celebration a few weeks or months into the program.

2. Touch base one last time with your leadership. Leadership support will mean different things in different organizations, but whatever it means in your context, make sure you get on their calendars or at least send an informative email in the weeks running up to your public opening. As we discuss in the Discovery Operations Guide, keeping your leadership in the loop ensures that you have the support you need to complete this extensive, careful work.

3. Take change management seriously. Make sure you have set the groundwork for change management in your organization. This entails meaningful outreach and briefings to your organization to explain what change is coming, how it will or will not affect them, and what the big why goal is. Draw on your marketing materials for this work, but be aware that at many of these one-on-ones, webinars, lunch & learns, and team meetings you will be listening and answering other people’s questions, rather than telling people about your work and having them listen to you.

4. ABW: Always Be Wrapping. Although it might seem counter-intuitive, now is the time to think about your offering’s exit strategy. If you achieve your immediate goals, what happens next? Do you know? Have you thought about what happens if your website gains so many users it crashes? What happens if your intervention gains no users and languishes? What happens if one part of the offering takes off, while another one nosedives? What happens if it runs for a few years and then has its funding cut? What’s the offering’s logical lifespan, as you have designed it? By answering these questions, you’ll be able to make sure you responsibly run your product, program, service, or system; after all, nothing lasts forever.

5. Have a plan to evolve. Most launches will be a mix of success and failure. Put your success and failure stories and create an ABW Strategy to define your offering’s evolution. This might be hard because much of “…the stuff the core civil servants they manage but they don’t implement. 100% of the implementation is contractors.”¹ BUT if you have successfully set up your marketing, you’ll have much more control than is typical, because “Even when policies favor (outsourcing), nowhere do they instruct the government to abdicate all responsibility to vendors. In no way do they prohibit public servants from deciding what to do..”²

6. Check again: how long are you funded for? Your initial runway is as long as your funding, and that tells you how long you have to become measurably valuable. If you think your funding is forever, you’ve got a real problem, since (a) nothing is funded forever and (b) an endless runway means you’re set up to never lift up and become a sustaining, value offering.

If, by the end of your known funding, your product, program, service, or system hasn’t become measurably valuable, you risk the offering becoming just another white elephant on the taxpayer’s dime. If that happens, that’s sad, but at least you have point (4) to go back to.

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