I was brought on by the CEO to bring a the company’s first B2B SaaS authoring assessment platform to market with a rapid six month turn around using Agile Methodologies with a global development team. The previous product manager had been unsuccessful in bringing about an MVP to market, so there was deep frustration in the organization towards the product and the team.

Gather Stakeholder Feedback and Input: The approach I took coming into this company was to get to know all of the stakeholders feedback and priorities for this MVP authoring assessment platform product. Since the previous product manager had been unsuccessful, there was a great deal of frustration and hopelessness towards getting an MVP product to market. I collaborated across the organization getting to know all of the key stakeholder groups and individuals getting to know their perspectives and learning from each of them including sales, marketing, support, account management, engineering, quality assurance, and executive leadership. Each of these stakeholders had a unique perspective to offer that was critical to the success of the MVP and to wow our current customer base and to attract new customers.

Identify Stakeholder Priorities and Gain Consensus: After getting to know the critical stakeholders perspectives and needs, I had each of the top stakeholders identify their top priorities for what should be included in the MVP. Many of the top priorities were the same across the organization, but a few differed. I worked with the leadership team to agree on the priorities that were common, and to discuss and debate on the ones that there was not agreement on. I came with the background information I had collaborated with the engineering and quality assurance teams to put together for the estimate length of time various components would take to develop and deliver to aid in the decision making for a six month turnaround for an MVP. Bringing all of the priorities in the open, to be discussed and debated, eventually came to an agreement on what would be included in the MVP.

Successful launch of B2B SaaS B2B in 6 Months: Once my product team had a set list of priorities to work from, we tackled them and were able to deliver them in the six month deadline for the MVP. This was highly anticipated by our existing customer base and opened up a brand new SaaS market to the company greatly increasing sales. At our next users conference for our product, I was able to demo the new product and the wild applause and excitement was palpable and I felt like a celebrity the rest of the users conference because of all of the buzz and excitement the new product had generated with our customer base.