Objective 4: Prepare for Launch: Packaging, Production, and Marketing Rollout

Objective 4: Prepare for Launch: Packaging, Production, and Marketing Rollout

Although this section is primarily relevant for independent software vendors developing shrink-wrapped products, some of the activities that follows are useful for other developments, especially for applications rolled out to a large set of internal customers.

It should be noted that for many large rollouts of commercial products, you may need to start this activity much earlier (in Elaboration or in Construction).

Packaging, Bill of Materials, and Production

The Bill of Materials (BOM) uniquely identifies all the constituent parts of a product. The final packaged product will consist of the software on some storage media, some documents or manuals, licensing agreement forms, and the packaging itself.

You need to ensure that all the items for manufacturing are in their final approved state at the time of delivery to the manufacturer. The approved application and installation software will need to be checked for viruses and saved on a mass-producible storage medium (for example, a master CD). Manuals and printed materials need to be in "camera-ready" format. Once all the component parts are in place and complete, they can be handed over to the manufacturing organization for mass production and duplication.

Marketing Rollout

If you are building a commercial product, here are some of the artifacts you might want to consider:

  • Core Message Platform (CMP). A one- to two-page description providing short, medium, and long descriptions of the product, its positioning, and key features and benefits. The CMP is the cornerstone in any successful launch and is used as a baseline or template for all internal and external communication related to the product.

  • Customer-consumable collateral . Data sheets, whitepapers, technical papers, information on your Web site, prerecorded demos of the product, demo scripts, and multimedia presentations providing an overview of the product.

  • Sales support material. Sales presentations, technical presentations, field training material, fact sheets, positioning papers, competitive write-ups, coaching on how to meet sales objections, references, success stories, and so on.

  • Launch material. Press releases, press kits, analyst briefings, and internal newsletters.



The Rational Unified Process Made Easy(c) A Practitioner's Guide to Rational Unified Process
Programming Microsoft Visual C++
ISBN: N/A
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 173

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