A Product Release Framework to Keep Everyone Calm
An important extra step to add to your product development process
Use a product release framework that separates your GA (when the product goes live) from your launch announcement by 4 weeks - giving you time to learn from real usage, reduce stress from slipping deadlines, and get full team engagement on GTM.
A Product Release Framework to Keep Everyone Calm
TL;DR: Your launch doesn’t need to happen the day your product goes live.
A few years ago, I joined a company as their Head of Product Marketing. It must have been day two or three of the new job when I noticed a frenzied energy in the office. The company had emailed all customers about a new product that morning - the same morning the product went live.
It turned out that marketing and product were not at all aligned on the name, the value prop, or the story. The head of sales wasn’t aligned with any of them. I watched everyone scramble into ad hoc calls, drafting reactive comms to handle a customer backlash that had developed.
Once the dust settled, the core issue became clear: there was no need to announce the product the same day the lights got turned on.
The standard release process
Software product releases tend to follow a well-known set of steps. When I was at Google, we called them things like “fish food”, “team food”, and “dogfood.” But the most common definition looks like this:
Alpha: Early, internal testing with a small group. Expect bugs and limited functionality.
Beta: Wider testing with select external users. The product is more stable, but still being refined.
General Availability (GA): The product is live and available to all users.
Technically, this framework works. But there’s an important step that should be separated out: your launch moment.
Separating GA from your launch
There will be exceptions to this idea. If you’re a well-known consumer brand, people are watching, so delaying your announcement might not be practical.
But in B2B, this approach is not only possible - it comes with serious benefits.
It’s less stressful.
Every PMM reading this knows the pain of trying to launch your product with a bang on the same day it rolls out to all users. Product release dates slip. Marketing plans get scrapped. Launch events get cancelled.
Separating your launch moment from GA gives you a buffer. My rule of thumb is having a four week gap between GA and launch. It takes the stress out of the “will we actually launch on time?” drama, giving you extra time to allow for slippage.
You get to learn.
When you give your product time to breathe before the big announcement, you get to hear what customers are actually saying. You catch bugs. You can gather feedback. You learn how people talk about your product - and can then use that language in your press release, your event, and homepage copy.
Product teams can fully engage.
Often during the final weeks of working on a new release, product managers, designers, and engineers are heads down, focused on hitting their deadline. They can’t fully engage on GTM - the story, the messaging, the channels. This creates a gap. Product might have one view of how it’ll play out, then see it live before they’ve had a chance to give input.
PMMs should drive GTM and hold the final pen - and ideally you’ve aligned on the story well ahead of product development - but launches are more successful when everyone’s joined up in their thinking during those crucial pre-launch weeks. It also creates better collaboration long-term when the whole team is brought in on the customer-facing output of a launch and there are no surprises.
One important caveat: While I recommend breaking out the big announcement as a separate step, you'll still need some GTM elements ready for GA Day. Likely a dedicated support page for the new product, clear in-product messaging for users who discover it themselves, and basic sales enablement before it goes live for all users. (You may even want to run sales enablement ahead of Beta - but I'll save that for another post.)
A better release framework
So here’s my take on what a product release framework should look like when you separate GA from launch:
The fourth step - your launch moment - is when you do the press release, the event, the big announcement. It should happen after GA, not on the same day.
Why this matters
I hope some of you are reading this thinking, “Yeah, of course. This is obvious.” But my experience tells me this isn’t how a lot of startups and tech companies work.
It’s worth having a framework like this that you can share with product teams. Make sure you’re not missing out on that crucial fourth step. Your launch will be better for it. And you’ll keep everyone a lot calmer in the process.
Rory Woodbridge is a London-based product marketing consultant working with fast-growth European tech companies. He was voted one of the world’s top product marketing consultants in 2025 and is a Top 100 PMM influencer.
This is a great point, though I do think there's one tradeoff worth mentioning: press often won't cover something that's already publicly available. So you may be making the tradeoff with earned media by taking this approach (which of course can be well worth it, but is worth considering nonetheless).
Such a great point! I’ve been in multiple “difficult conversations” with founders who think you should be beating the drums the moment the feature road is removed.