everybody. This is still a hefty

and this is heating

shop. And today on the subject, we're gonna talk about how to do product development and product management during a global pandemic. You like talking about more than your sales and marketing. We just wanna bullshit and Chet about business in life. And hopefully, while we're doing that, provide along value todo for people trying to get shit done. Yeah, we don't want to give you feedback. That's bullshit. You want you to do your best. So here's a question for you. Eaten. Most product teams had a most software companies. Let's talk just about product companies and suffer Company's broader. They had a product roadmap.

Very likely that road map was standing over, you know, a couple of weeks, if not months, many of them will have one that is, you know, that they had set for the entire year. Usually these product development cycles there they're substantial long, and he needs a good amount of had time to plan for them and to put things in motion and had, like this f teamwork on things before they can chip things. So now you had this rope net for whatever quarter to, let's say, 1/4 3 this year. And now the world is mounting down. We're having this little pandemic. People have to work from home.

And the big question that many people have is how is this gonna affect a product we met in a product development process. There is one bucket of questions that is centered around productivity, right? Deaf team. Are there gonna be productive working from home with their families? They're they're gonna be able to ship on time. As our original timelines were like, How is this gonna affect the productivity and the timelines of milestones and all that? And then there's the other bucket of questions that I see floating around, which is, should we do we have to adjust or should we adjust our product roadmap because the well world is melting down? Like should we? Maybe the things that we thought launching to our customer base in a month or two from now would be very exciting and very useful. Maybe it's not useful. Exciting right now. Maybe launching product features right now in general is a bad idea because people are running around with their hair on fire and sending them an email that we've launched a news.

Whatever you know, settings feature is nobody will care about any of this. You know, you have been, you know, developing many, many products over the years, and you've been studying cabinets. I mean it sze your email list even in a product of itself dealing with product leaders, product managers. Um, how do you think about this? Like, how much? A little should a global crisis like this influence the way you think about your product? Road man and the things that you were that you are building and planning to ship in kind of the short

to mid term? Yeah, it's really good question. I think there's a few few things. One because this involves companies working in ways they might not be used to sew working from home. It's likely in a lot of companies. Product development has slowed down, maybe even came to a home. I'll give you a good example. Google, which is not a company known for working from home. I'm sure people did it on do it. They actually have either slow down or stop releasing updates to crow. They sent out an email about that. They said they'd send. They do security updates cause I think they have to. Ah,

it's critical. But they basically said because of this crisis and, you know, team, whatever, whatever, they said of their email, they literally sent a Newman said that everybody, now that is unprecedented. He e like I've never heard Google say we're stopping development on something or pausing development on something because of beach happy. And this is what the pandemic is causing. So one be aware of the fact that you might not be able to be as productive isn't normal work. If your team is not used to working from home or if your team is emotionally impacted, bio the situation that's going on or if some people on your team so there's a bunch of slack. You kind of have to give people. And so you know you still have a choice.

And so if you were checking in on your team by walking to their desk and talking to them or using whiteboards, physical whiteboards or, you know, going in conference rooms and talking together and having these meetings, you don't get to do that anymore until this thing is over. We don't know how, what it's gonna be over. We don't know when we can go back in that off, because if we do go to an office, that implication, I think, is really great and big for any company that used to collaborating in the same room, which is not every company, but it's most companies. Truth, Roy A.

CZ, much as you and I are advocates for this, like those companies still work in an office. And I know you and I are not like the base camp who, like, are shouting from the rooftops about remote work right now, literally shouting the rooftops and even their own product is delayed. They had a product. They're gonna launch an email product called Hey, in April and now they said, it's indefinite legally. So if that's any indication, that should tell you at least that whatever delays you're having internally because of all this stuff, like you're gonna be either delayed or you're just so used to working from home and your team is resilient, whether it's emotionally or just in general, that it's all gonna impact you greatly.

That being said, like who knows? Like things can change early sauce around that. So that's I think, one thing to be aware and that means that, like this is like, not normal. It's not normal at all. That's a big deal. I think that's the thing that like, I don't I don't have specific product development advice. I mean, most couples don't have the proper processes. They don't know howto work from home and get product development. Duck, They just don't until they're using Zoom.

They're finding their alternatives toe white boarding. If they're really into that there, hopefully documenting more. I mean, these are all tips that we tell you if you're working from home and how to do it and then that's fine. Those tits you're out there, please go like pay attention to them and see what you can do to change up. Your process is really quickly. It's probably just like number one thing is that that's just obvious. And zoom is holding up. Oh, my God. Jesus. We're using it for my God.

I mean, what? This podcasts right now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's working.

Yeah, it's a miracle.

It's ah, I know a lot of people. I don't lot of people have praised Eric, praise the company and praise the team. I don't think we would We would be any different, right? In this case, like, yes, Like, wow. So Zoom meeting because Google hangouts is actually not working consistently for me. Uh, the way that soon does. Right now, whenever I try it, something goes wrong. And this way, way more wrong this than usual. Anyway,

I just wanted to ask about Do you think it's smart to maybe change your roadmap? Because you think maybe maybe doing a feature earlier would be more relevant during this time? Is that a good idea to, like, change the comment when you don't know how long this crisis will take?

What? The implications, I think changing. I think changing timelines on road maps to be more relevant right now, if there are features that you think are more relevant for your customers right now, that's great. But in normal product development, we'd be talking to customers understanding what problems they have in building product for them and making improvements for them. So it should be business as usual there, except you might already have a plan that you need to kind of blow up or re ST based on new found information about what's going on with human beings on the planet, right? That's cool. That makes sense as long as you have some potential there. Not all products. How about potential? But we're we're thinking the same Robert F. Y.

I as well. I think the other thing I wanted to mention is product launches. Right now, you are going to be a little tricky. Yeah, it's gonna be tricky. Just your expectations shouldn't be. That shouldn't be normal. It should either be wildly index, so that because it's relevant right now, you might get a lot for sign ups. I'm not, I'm not. I've seen a lot of data on this recently. It's not as good as people might be tweeting about in terms of the amount of sign up. Certain companies are getting that being said,

if you're anything video related right now and you help people collaborate by a video specifically, maybe audio. You're probably seeing a major your major uptick. But most other categories I've seen. Besides, like certain things around like e commerce and direct to consumer, I'm not seeing the uptick. In fact, I'm seeing the opposite people. The traffic might come, but it's not signing up like it used to. And there's always opportunity in this stuff you can find a way if you have numbers that you're looking still meet that being said, like, these product launches were very different right here, because the majority of stuff that's launching is relevant to what's going on in the world. Yeah, and that's not normal at all. That's not usually how this because there's so many different things going on the world right now. There's

one thing going on with you in the fucking world. One do Ludzik. That's the big difference, and that impacts everything. Insane Times men. Well, thank you so much for sharing some of that perspective. I do think it's helpful for people. It's your question, and I will wrap up this episode as always, if you have more questions just to this animal each inch Iijima about calm Stella close The combo was happy to help if we can, especially during a global condemning, we want to be more helpful, probably, he says. That will heal you next time,