As long as we own a product,idea or business, there really is no end to it for us until we choose to kill it (which is sometimes the right choice) or sell it off. Until then, we should seek to continually improve upon the product, marketing and delivery of that product though we can say with some confidence that reaching the phase of "Sustain/Improve" brings some sense of accomplishment and closure.

If we have done our homework and sought from the beginning to automate where possible or plan for automation once we reach this phase, it should by far be the least work with the greatest amount of reward. At this point we continue to collect feedback from our customers and integrate appropriate changes to the product, bearing in mind you can't make everyone happy and you'll get some genuinely off-the-wall suggestions. We'll continue to further our use of automation so that maintenance requires the least amount of time from us while delivering the best possible product most efficiently and at the least cost. If anything, we continue to make small tweaks which become periodic and are adjustments for a changing market environment. Making those changes and adjustments as well as handling the occasional client service need (most of that has been automated or outsourced too) should require little more than a few hours a week if that.

It's important to keep in mind that as we continue to improve those improvements are going to be very incremental and may be very small. Some, if requiring a significant level-of-effort vs. the ROI for implementing may not be worth doing. Always perform due diligence and asses the ROI of what you are about to do. Don't analyze it to death, but pay attention.

Some of the ways we can gather feedback for making those improvements to the product include a feedback form, a customer survey, simple observation of conversations (forms, blogs), web analytics (how do people actually use your site and get to purchasing your product) and business intelligence (which is an entirely different conversation but think "data mining" and making sense of all that raw data you are capturing).

It's very easy to get complacent at this point. Don't. You should be working less (on this idea) but you need to stay on top of it or all of that hard work will start to wane as observed through declining sales.

A few bullets to keep in mind:

- Keep an open mind about the feedback you get
- Don't try to please everyone (sure path to failure)
- Improve your product and your internal processes
- Make your customers happy but they are NOT always right
- The ones who are the least pain are the most profitable, don't be afraid to fire the one's who cause you most of your headaches (yes you can fire customers and should)
- Automate, Automate, Automate!
- Always look at ROI.

And when it's all over and requires only a little of your time, move on to the next idea and start it all over!




(Idea Lifecycle Frameowrk, Phase 7. click to enlarge)




















If you would like the original framework form with added detail request it here:

Labels: frameworks, ideas