gtm-launch

When to use

• A product, feature, or major capability is approaching ship-readiness and the team needs a wave plan (alpha → beta → GA) keyed to audience and proof, not a date on a calendar.
• A launch is being planned date-first; the team needs to invert and plan readiness-first so an unmet gate stops a wave instead of leaking past it.
• A previous launch landed soft and the retro names "no audience-by-wave logic" or "narrative beats unclear per wave" as the cause.

Do NOT use to write announcement copy (route to release-comms), lock the message stack (route to messaging-architecture), or plan post-launch retention loops (route to retention-loops).

Cognition cluster

• Mental model 10 — Reversible vs. irreversible decisions. A GA wave is largely irreversible: rolling back narrative and audience expectations after public launch costs more than re-shipping the product. Alpha and beta are reversible; treat them as the decision-quality buffer. See docs/contracts/mental-models.md § 10.
• Mental model 29 — Premortem. Before the wave plan locks, write the post-mortem of the launch as if it failed. The premortem surfaces the gates that need to hold; the wave plan is the inverse of that list. See mental-models.md § 29.
• Mental model 16 — Leading vs. lagging indicators. Engineering- readiness signals (error rate, latency, support-load) are leading; pipeline lift is lagging. A wave plan that gates on lagging signals ships into a soft floor. See mental-models.md § 16.
• Context-spine — product + customer-segment + channel-stage. Read the product slot for shippable scope, the customer-segment slot for who hears the launch on which wave, and the channel-stage slot for where each wave's audience lives in the awareness → decision arc. See context-spine.

Procedure

Step 0: Inherit the message stack

Identify the locked primary-message.md, supporting-proofs.md, and audience-matrix.md from messaging-architecture. If the stack is missing or unstable, stop and route back. A launch plan without a locked message stack ships three different stories at three different surfaces.

Step 1: Run the premortem

Write the launch post-mortem as if it has already failed. Three prompts: "what did the segment hear that we did not say," "what broke in the first 48 hours," "what did the alternative say first and louder." The premortem produces the failure-mode list the wave plan must neutralise.

Step 2: Define the gates per wave

For each wave (alpha · beta · GA), define entry gates and exit gates:

• Alpha entry: engineering-readiness signal threshold (error rate, latency, instrumentation coverage). Exit: < N support tickets per 100 sessions on the load-bearing flow.
• Beta entry: alpha exit + audience-matrix proof exists for the beta audience. Exit: leading indicator (activation, time-to- first-value) clears threshold per mental-models.md § 16.
• GA entry: beta exit + narrative beats locked for the public segment. Exit: not applicable — GA is irreversible; the next wave is post-launch retention, handed to retention-loops.

Step 3: Sequence the audience waves

Audience waves are not seniority waves. They are proof waves. Each wave's audience is whichever segment generates the proof the next wave needs. Order:

1. Alpha audience — the segment where the team can sit next to the user. Proof: load-bearing flow does not break under real use.
2. Beta audience — the segment whose adoption is the credibility anchor for GA. Proof: a quotable reference and an activation curve.
3. GA audience — the full ICP segment from the customer-segment slot. Proof: pipeline lift, narrative pickup, retention curve.

Step 4: Assign narrative beats per wave

Each wave gets a narrative beat — the one thing the audience remembers. Alpha beat = trust signal (we are not winging it). Beta beat = proof signal (it works for someone like you). GA beat = the primary message from messaging-architecture Step 1. Beats stack; they do not contradict.

Step 5: Validate the plan against the premortem

Validate each premortem failure mode against the wave plan: verify a specific gate or beat neutralises it. Any failure mode without an explicit neutraliser is a known leak — name it, do not bury it. Validation passes only when every premortem item is either neutralised or accepted-with-mitigation.

Step 6: Hand back

Hand the artefacts to release-comms for announcement-surface drafting, to editorial-calendar for cadence mapping, and to launch-readiness for the merge-day checklist.

Related Skills

WHEN to use this

• The unit of work is the wave plan (alpha · beta · GA) with gates and beats, not a single announcement.
• A launch needs readiness-gated sequencing instead of calendar-driven sequencing.
• The team can name the message stack but not which audience hears which beat in which wave.

WHEN NOT to use this

• Writing the announcement copy or press surface — route to release-comms.
• Locking the primary message and proofs — route to messaging-architecture.
• Pre-merge ops checklist (rollout, rollback, monitoring) — route to launch-readiness.
• Post-launch retention design — route to retention-loops.

When the agent should load this

• "Plan the launch waves for the new pricing tier."
• "Wir starten den GA — gib mir die Alpha-Beta-GA Sequenz."
• "What are the entry gates for the beta wave?"
• "Premortem the launch and rebuild the wave plan from the failure list."
• "Sequence the audience waves around the proof we still need."

Output

1. launch-premortem.md — three failure modes per prompt, ranked by carrying cost, each tagged with the wave that owns the neutraliser.
2. wave-plan.md — three waves (alpha · beta · GA) with entry / exit gates, audience, leading-indicator threshold per wave.
3. narrative-beats.md — one beat per wave (trust → proof → primary-message), with the line the team will not contradict on any surface during that wave.

Gotcha

• Calendar-driven launches confuse a date with a gate. A date does not signal readiness; a gate does. The wave plan must hold even if the date slips two weeks.
• "Friends-and-family alpha" is alpha-shaped theatre — it produces the wrong proof for the next wave. Recruit an alpha audience that exposes the load-bearing flow.
• A premortem that produces only three failure modes was rushed; push for ten and keep the load-bearing three.

Do NOT

• Do NOT write the announcement copy here — copy lives in release-comms downstream of locked beats.
• Do NOT collapse alpha and beta to save calendar time — alpha and beta produce different proofs.
• Do NOT lock GA without an explicit retention-loops handoff; an unowned post-launch fortnight is where most launches soften.

Runnable example

Mid-market HR analytics tool launching workforce-analytics layer:

• Premortem: (a) CFOs hear "another tool" not "retention saving"; (b) HRIS plug-in misconfigured under load; (c) reference customer quote not contractually approved by GA.
• Wave plan — Alpha: 3 design-partner HR directors, gate = HRIS plug-in error-rate < 1 % under load. Beta: 10 HR leaders matching ICP, gate = activation curve hits 5 cohort-roll-ups per week. GA: full ICP segment, gate = quoted reference contractually approved.
• Narrative beats — Alpha: "we sat next to you while it worked." Beta: "an HR director like you saved 7 hours last board-quarter." GA: primary message from messaging-architecture Step 1.
• Hand-off → release-comms drafts the GA-wave surface; retention-loops owns the 30-day post-GA cohort.