What are action items that you always include on your product launch checklist?

I won't share the full list -- there are some great resources out there like SiriusDecisions -- but here are a few that I've learned through trial and error are really helpful.

• PRFAQ: As soon as possible, I work closely with PM to craft a "PRFAQ" (fake press release, customer and internal FAQs). Then, we circulate that to cross-functional stakeholders from sales to legal to finance to customer success to enablement. It's a killer way to make sure everyone is on the same page, and flag items that require debate and dialogue. We're doing this right now for a major initiative, in fact!
• Messaging framework: Currently, I'm loving "Storybrand" (check out the book Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller). For every major launch, we craft messaging that puts our customer at the center as the hero, and positions us as the hero's guide. Not only does it make for empathetic, customer-centric storytelling -- it's also a great tool for other teams to build out content. 
• Tiger teams: Our launch marketing manager brings together key cross-functional team members starting months before a launch. In addition to driving key deliverables, they also serve as the subject matter experts within their team in a "train the trainer" kind of capacity. For example, for our new AI-Guided Selling offering, the solutions engineer participating in the tiger team is getting the whole SE team up to speed on how to demo it effectively. Way better way to scale!
• Enablement plan: Every product has different enablement implications from the teams that need to know, to the topics they need to know about it. We partner with our enablement team to tailor it for every launch. 
• Slack channel: Centralizing questions and information about a particular launch or capability is a great way to democratize knowledge-transfer. Whenever a sales person or CS rep reaches out to me over email with a question (e.g., pricing or availability), I point them to Slack. Then our internal community can help provide answers, which makes everything so much faster!

This has depended fairly dramatically depending on the size of the product launch, how ready the product is for prime-time, and the scale of the company! For example, for my Jira Work Management launch we needed to make sure that:

• Purchasing and provisioning pathways were live
• Support / sales teams were enabled to answer questions
• Email comms were accurate and scheduled
• PR interviews were completed the week prior to launch
• Landing pages are live and priority pages were translated

We had a marketing runbook that involved ~50-70 tasks depending on how you count the work. For product launches at smaller companies, however, it looked something like this:

• Email comms scheduled / accurate
• Social comms scheduled / accurate
• Checking for dead links across all pages
• Establishing support documentation and basic FAQs
• Posts for Product Hunt / Hacker News / IndieHackers were all ready

I've found that larger company product launches involve significantly more cross-team enablement compared to startups where the majority of the launch is the launch itself. Much more work and pre-planning went into launching a product at Atlassian.

Here are some of the core steps I'll take leading up to a product launch. Depending on the type of launch these may be more intensive or unnecessary.

1. Create a pre-launch brief and set up weekly/bi-weekly meetings

2. Define your stakeholders using RAPID (Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide) framework

3. Complete your messaging/positioning framework and get stakeholder feedback

   1. Test your messaging with your beta customers or a customer advisory board

4. Outline your marketing program to support your launch and assign the deliverables (press release, webinar, email communications)

5. Set up sales enablement and training. Define the deliverables needed such as an update to your sales deck, a demo video, help center article, etc.

6. Create communication strategy for internal stakeholders (weekly exec program readouts, company all hands)

For a launch of any significant size, the most valuable action on my checklist is a post-launch retro.

You will always want to measure KPIs and ensure positioning is accurate, but the retro is often overlooked. A well-run retrospective can uncover meaningful insights to both improve the recent launch success as well as avoid unnecessary challenges and uncover new opportunities in future launches. It also builds partnerships across teams reinforcing the value of the key stakeholders involved in the launch.

A retro can take on several formats and be run live virtually, in-person or asynchronously, but the key attribute is open communication and unbiased documentation. I like the 'what worked' 'what didn't go well' and 'Actions/Improvements'. I'm old-school in that I prefer post its on a whiteboard, but you can also use virtual platforms like Figjam.