Does your Product Feature really work end to end – especially in the hands of the customer?
My family and I recently did an epic cross country road trip. Not related to this post, I had many epiphanies about many things – one being our Country; our roads, little and large towns, and people generally seem to be in much better shape than they were when we made similar trips back in 2015. But, I digress. During this road trip, I needed to book hotel rooms. So, the “Roaming Gnome” came to mind (marketing did its job on me) and I surfed over to Travelocity.
On their website, it said “get 10% off with your first hotel booking” if you use the app. So, I took the bait, downloaded the app, found my hotel, booked, and wait for it… there was no place to put in the promo code. I did an online chat with customer service and their best answer was, “well, you should have put in the code the first time – there is nothing we can do.” I booked two additional hotels during the trip and never found the spot for the promo code.
Product Managers – it is your responsibility to make sure your features work, “womb to tomb.” It’s your failure when they don’t. Agile is there to help. Your team is there to help. But you ultimately have to make sure the feature is a success for your organization, or risk reputational and other risks. In Travelocity’s case, it’s a darn good thing I’m greeted by the Roaming Gnome when I open the app. Without that, I would dump Travelocity and use another product.