The big question for your end game

As a Product Manager sooner or later you find yourself dealing with one of those precarious situations where there seems to be no sane resolution to the challenge in front of you. The release date cannot be moved, you have no additional resources to work with, and there seems to be endless number of release blockers - features or defects that absolutely must be addressed prior to release.

To help successfully navigate through this last mile of your release journey, ask yourself and your team the following question:

At this stage of the project, can we afford to expend any effort on anything other than feature or capability that if missing will prevent 100% of our target customer base from adopting our product?

• Any effort includes testing and documentation of workarounds;

• Anything other includes useful capabilities requested by loyal, real customers - people with families and kids who we absolutely want to delight;

• Target customer base does not necessarily include each and every one of our existing customers, and does not have to be centered on Big Bank ABC in particular (or Super Big Telecom, or Government Contractor XYZ, nor many other prominent check writers).