Launching something new is always exciting, but it’s also chaos disguised as progress. No matter how much you plan, something’s going to slip through the cracks. I just went through a launch like that, and things can get MESSY when planning doesn’t quite keep up with momentum.
I wanted to share some of what we learned the hard way.
1. Pause, Plan, and Realign.
Before you launch, make sure you actually know what you’re launching.
Like, literally, have a list.
In our case, we’d paused development to switch to another product and then came back to this one months later. By that point, half the context had vanished into Slack threads and old notes.
So when we finally said, “Okay, let’s pick this up again,” no one was totally sure what the current state was. We started building before we’d really reoriented. That led to confusion, missing context, and people asking, “Wait, did we finish that?” way too many times.
Honestly, a short regroup would’ve saved us a week of chaos. And it builds trust. That’s important for keeping things moving smoothly.
2. Testing is Always the Real Work.
Here’s the thing — the code wasn’t that big of a deal. The real beast was testing. We thought we could get everything out in a week, but it turns out we needed a full sprint just for testing.
We ran a bug bash, but barely anyone tested. The few people who did — like our managers and delivery leads — immediately found a bunch of issues, which made it super clear that a lot of others hadn’t even opened the app.
And that’s the tricky part: if it’s even a little bit hard for people to test your app, they just won’t. You’ve got to make it dead simple to test, or testing just won’t happen.
3. Build a Shared Test Plan.
Our test plan lived mostly in the PM’s head, which is… not ideal. The test cases weren’t broad enough, and people weren’t on the same page about what “done” meant.
What we should’ve done was sit down together and map it out:
• What are the key features?
• What does success look like for each?
• Who’s testing what, and when?
When you don’t define that stuff, everyone ends up testing different things or assuming someone else already did. It wastes time, creates noise, and leaves bugs lurking around until the last minute.
4. Don’t Use Your Personal Accounts to Test.
Yeah, we did this. We used our own accounts for testing, which sounded fine at first — until we realized it totally limited what we could simulate.
Some bugs only appeared under very specific user conditions, and since we weren’t testing with proper test accounts, we never saw them.
If I could do it again, I’d spin up test users that represent all the different types of people who might use the app. Test new users, returning users, power users — everyone. Because trust me, those edge cases always find a way to crash the party.
5. Decide What’s Actually a Launch Blocker.
This one hurt. We kept finding bugs, and every new bug felt like a crisis. But not every bug is a showstopper.
The problem was we never clearly defined what counted as a “launch blocker.” So we treated every issue like it was life or death. That dragged things out and drained everyone’s energy.
You have to draw a line somewhere and say, “These bugs we fix now. These others, we fix later.” Otherwise, you’ll just keep delaying forever. There’s always one more bug.
6. Pre-Launch Praise: Celebrate Along the Way.
By the time we launched, everyone was exhausted. People were working late nights, weekends, the whole thing. We kept saying, “We’ll celebrate after launch.” But by the time “after” came, no one had the energy left to celebrate anything.
Now I really believe in celebrating milestones as they happen. Feature complete? Celebrate. Testing done? Celebrate. Even a small win like a clean regression test deserves a moment. Gratitude keeps people going. It reminds everyone that the work matters.
Final Thoughts
Every launch teaches you something. This one taught me that it’s not just about fixing bugs or shipping code — it’s about staying aligned, communicating often, and taking care of your team.
Plan together. Test early. Decide what actually matters.
And don’t forget to say thank you.
Ouch – but always good to read about projects that did not go smoothly and lessons learned from them