How DoorDash launches products

This is the first article in our series dedicated to unpacking and explaining how top product teams launch successful products at scale.

We sat down with Thibault de Waziers, product manager at DoorDash. Thibault leads the product teams responsible for improving the lives of dashers (drivers), with the goal of enhancing the “quality” of deliveries. In this article, we'll delve into Thibault's team's launch strategy, their processes, and how they collaborate with stakeholders to achieve high-quality launches.

How DoorDash defines, identifies and structures its launches

Define - what is a launch?

“At DoorDash, a launch is a change in our app or in our tech that will impact the users’ lives in a better way. What we always try to achieve, is making life simpler for our users, whether they are dashers delivering orders, consumers placing orders, or the merchants handling those orders.”

A launch begins  when teams start thinking about solving a prioritized problem and ends when it brings the desired outcome to users. Here are two examples of launches: 

1. Auto-translate in-app chat for non-English speakers.
2. Pricing bump for carrying heavy items.

Identify - what leads to launches?

Launches are identified by first listing and prioritizing the most pressing customer pain points. Thibault's team maintains a dynamic list of these pain points, continuously refines and revisits them. To ensure the highest degree of relevance, they actively engage with customers, with Thibault himself participating in deliveries with dashers, listening to feedback, and identifying pain points. Launches are the initiatives the team undertakes to address these prioritized pain points. 

Segmentation - what are the various launch categories and who gets involved? 

Thibault’s team does not differentiate between various categories of launches, but mostly follow a standardized process for all their launches. Of course, they adapt it depending on the size of the launch and cross-functional teams involved. When team dependencies are high, they spend an increasing amount of time involving and aligning these teams, to make sure the work is done at the right time, during the launch process. 

Each launch, at the minimum, has a ‘pod’ involved with participants from the following teams: Product, Engineering, Design, Data and Operations. Each of these participants has a key role and responsibility during the various phases and checkpoints of the launch. 

Having said that, they do also have a “test and learn” fast process, where rapid experiments are carried on 5% of users, and learnings are derived to explore and gain insights into new ideas and concepts.

The launch process at DoorDash

Thibault walked us through the structured process of a DoorDash launch, providing an end-to-end milestone overview, composed of key phases and checkpoints.

1. Initiation and kickoff meeting: the launch process starts with discussions dedicated to the selection and refinement of initiatives. During a kickoff meeting, the ‘pod’ (including Product, Data, Design, Engineering, and Operations) aligns on the scope of the problem and potential solutions → Each launch gets assigned a DRI i.e. Directly Responsible Individual, one person from each core team to ensure holistic ownership and accountability.

“I always have a live backlog. This document where I list all the initiatives, the problems, the ideas. This is a document that I refresh every week with my team. (...) It is our live source of truth that ranks what we want to do next. Once something is getting close to getting ready to get picked up, we have a kickoff meeting where we say, ‘Hey, this is the problem, this is the scope, this is how we're thinking about it.”

2. Brief creation: the product manager creates a brief that summarizes the problem at hand, the suggested approach, associated risks, expected impact, and provides essential context → DoorDash's brief template.‍
3. Checkpoint #1 - brief review: during this phase, a comprehensive review is conducted with leads from various product areas and cross-functional stakeholders, including pod members and when relevant, Marketing and Legal → The primary objective is to obtain the "go/no-go" decision for the initiative based on the “brief”.‍
4. UX design phase: subsequent to the brief review, the product manager collaborates with cross-functional teams (incl Operations, Data, and Engineering) to gather inputs and align with designers, to work on the mocks. ‍
5. Checkpoint #2 - design review: it involves giving feedback and discussing the designs within Figma → Obtain a "go/no-go" decision, or iterate. 
6. ‍PRD: at this stage, the product manager crafts the Product Requirement Document (PRD), which serves as a comprehensive document outlining use cases, and clarifying any aspects that may not be evident in the Figma designs.‍
7. Engineering handoff: the project transitions to the engineering team. The handoff process necessitates the inclusion of essential documents: the brief, the designs, and the PRD. During this phase, the project's scope within engineering is reviewed and aligned before progressing to the next stage of development.‍
8. Project execution: DoorDash engineering team organizes sprints, every two weeks alongside daily standup meetings.‍
9. Testing “party”: after ‘code complete’, a thorough testing phase is conducted, involving the small working group.‍
10. Roll out to employees - dogfooding: to gather feedback and identify bugs.‍
11. Launch readiness meeting: Engineering conducts a meeting to brief other engineering teams about the impending launch. This stage is essential to ensure that everyone is well-prepared in case of any issues, with a clear understanding of how to address them.‍
12. Check point #3 - ship review: this critical stage involves a live demonstration to team leads to ensure alignment with the initial design → A "go/no-go" decision is reached for the subsequent customer rollout.‍
13. 50% roll out: the project is typically rolled out to 50% of users for a duration of two weeks.‍
14. Experiments review and decision on whether to expand the feature to 100% of users.‍‍‍
15. 100% roll out.
16. Monitoring and iteration: the launch process entails ongoing monitoring and iteration. Lessons learned and areas for improvement are documented and reintegrated into the backlog. Each opportunity is thoughtfully evaluated in comparison to other initiatives in the pipeline. This cyclical process underpins DoorDash's commitment to continuous improvement and innovation.

‍Communication and engagement with cross-functional teams

Customer Support (CS) team

Thibault emphasized the importance of keeping the CS team informed about critical upcoming releases, ensuring they have all the necessary information to assist customers once the launch is complete. When their involvement is necessary, the Operations team closely coordinates with CS to ensure a smooth transition. This collaboration occurs formally during the ship review process and informally through Slack updates throughout the launch process, keeping CS informed about the upcoming features. 

“We recently implemented a feature to increase pay when delivering heavy items, such as a pack of water. This was a significant launch that potentially required explanation after the launch date. We did inform the CS team about this change and kept them actively involved throughout the process.”

DoorDash's product culture emphasizes end-to-end ownership for PMs. If a PM is responsible for a launch, they take full ownership of it, including incorporating changes into the CS knowledge base. This approach ensures that PMs have complete ownership of the user experience and prevents the CS team from being overwhelmed with requests from multiple teams.

Marketing and Legal teams

When their involvement is needed, DoorDash keeps stakeholders, such as Marketing and Legal, informed as participants from the start of a launch. Teams use the three review checkpoints as a way to align all stakeholders, inform them, get their feedback, and proceed with the best possible team alignment. It’s a great way for Marketing and Legal to structure their participation in a launch and support it accordingly.

Challenges in progress tracking

At DoorDash, teams employ multiple platforms (emails, Slack, trackers in sheets and documents, tasks management solutions specifically Jira ..) to keep stakeholders informed about the status of their launches, their progress, blockers, etc. However, it can be challenging for individuals from cross-functional teams to stay informed when they need it, especially when relying on numerous fragmented communication channels. This often results in a significant amount of back-and-forth communication on Slack, which can lead to discussions and decisions being lost.

Even though being extremely diligent at updating Jira, which takes time and effort, it is hard to avoid scattering launch data across a stream of sheets and docs, depending on what to communicate and to whom. 

Best practices and tips for product managers going through a launch

Thibault shared some best practices and tips for fellow product managers navigating the launch journey:

1. Maintain a centralized "source of truth": Thibault emphasized the importance of having a centralized repository for each project, containing the right level of detail that provides all stakeholders with easy access to critical information. This centralized hub serves as a single point of reference, ensuring that everyone is working from the same set of facts and reducing the risk of misunderstandings or inconsistencies.
2. Align around a structured launch checklist: Thibault underscored the significance of having a structured launch checklist. Such a checklist ensures that all necessary steps are clear to everyone and diligently executed throughout the launch process.
3. Establish structured monthly updates: Thibault advocates for regular updates to keep everyone informed about ongoing projects and accomplishments. These structured monthly updates highlight the projects the team is actively working on and the progress they have made in recent months. This regular cadence of communication ensures that stakeholders remain in the loop about project status and can provide feedback or input as needed → DoorDash's monthly product update newsletter template.

"When you have multiple projects and I currently have five or six in parallel right now, it's very easy to forget if you've done one step or the other. That's why I believe that maintaining a meticulously organized launch checklist and making it publicly accessible is paramount. Right now, if I want to see experiment results for a project, instead of digging into Slack to find the information, I just go to my checklist to get the link of my project. Then on my project’s ‘source of truth’, I get the link to the experiment. I'm not looking for links the entire time."

‍Concluding thoughts 

Thibault's insights into DoorDash's launch process provide a valuable perspective for product managers looking to improve their own product launch strategies. The emphasis on cross-team collaboration, maintaining open lines of communication, and a structured approach to each launch is central to DoorDash's success in delivering exceptional customer experiences.