PRODUCTHEAD: In a flat spin from a failed product launch

product lag: 2+2=5 #

every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to

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tl;dr

Sonos is working through a major user backlash after launching a flawed app

Pressure from senior management forced the launch to happen before it was ready

Tips for recognising and managing tension as a product manager

Round-up of lessons learned from failed product launches

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hello

Sonos is struggling to recover from what could be described as a flat spin*. Layoffs, a rushed and botched app upgrade, irate customers, delayed hardware, more layoffs and CEO Patrick Spence’s recent estimate to investors of “$20 million to $30 million in the short term … to right the ship in for the long term”. Sonos and Spence haven’t metaphorically hit the ground yet, but it’s rushing up to greet them.

For Sonos’s customers, the trouble started with the release of an update in early May 2024 to the app used to setup and control aspects of their networked sound system. However, it’s becoming clearer that the problems had been building up internally long before the fateful S2 app update.

Writing for Ars Technica, Scharon Harding reports that S2 had originally been slated for a March 2024 release, but was delayed to May due to “software-engineering [sic] challenges”, according to Bloomberg. Although the S2 app was the public-facing part of the software update, Spence confirmed in August what CPO Maxime Bouvat-Merlin had alluded to just after the flawed S2 launch: this had been a ground-up “redesign of the entire system, not only the app but also the player side of our system as well as our cloud infrastructure”.

The deeper problem was that S2 was the rate-determining step for the launch of new, investor-pleasing hardware. Reading between the lines, it would seem that Sonos’s flagship Ace wireless headphones and other speaker hardware planned for 2024 depended on the new S2 app and revamped platform.

The platform rebuild had been in progress since at least mid-2022, possibly even as early as 2019 when the headphones project was first reported. According to Sonos insiders, the app’s technical debt had been building up for 20 years before the update. With all that accumulated tech debt, it’s little wonder that the re-platforming project was dragging on, delaying the dependent hardware launches in the process.

It’s clear from the frustrations of the anonymous employees interviewed by Bloomberg that senior management was pressuring the engineering teams to release S2 (and presumably the underlying new platform) despite their warnings it wasn’t ready. The multiple rounds of layoffs in the last few years have probably not helped either, around 460 employees since 2020**.

As a result, the S2 debacle has stolen the thunder from the Ace headphones launch. The other hardware products have been delayed anyway to 2025 while all focus is diverted towards damage limitation through bi-weekly updates to the S2 app. Bloomberg reports the share price to be down 25 percent this year, although at the time of writing it’s also almost exactly the same as it was 12 months ago.

While there has certainly been plenty of customer backlash, it has not been universal. Some customers are seemingly less reliant on the app and have not been as affected as others. It’s also difficult to judge how many will follow through on their threats to ditch their (likely) thousands of dollars’ investment in Sonos gear to move to another manufacturer.

What can we take away from this? My reductive diagnosis:

Factor 1: intense investor pressure to deliver new products to market

Factor 2: significant layoffs to cut costs and bolster profitability (again probably to appease investors)

These factors contributed to underinvestment in addressing long-standing technical debt (a major drag factor) and unrealistically aggressive time scales to launch those new products.

Although we don’t have the full picture, we often see examples of this anti-pattern, particularly when it comes to re-platforming a ‘cash cow’ product. (With Sonos however the situation is slightly different: the app and back-end platform are not directly revenue-generating, but they are critical to enabling the dependent hardware that is.)

With the benefit of hindsight it’s easy to criticise that Sonos didn’t devote more time to resolving their technical debt before it became critical. Nevertheless it does seem that publicly listed companies are more prone to chase investor favour in the short term through splashy new product announcements, rather than the longer-term benefit (but unsexy story) of keeping on top of their tech debt.

The twist in the tale is that the bi-weekly app updates may reflect that the engineering team finally has senior management’s public blessing to sort out all that tech debt. As the saying goes, “never waste a good crisis”. Time will tell whether this is too little, too late, or the beginning of a redemption story arc for Sonos.

For you this week #

At some point or another in your career as a product manager, you’ll end up in a situation in which you’re under immense pressure from your senior managers to launch a product before it’s ready. No amount of evidence, user research or appeals to rationality will sway them.

This is almost always a no-win situation. When the inevitable user backlash occurs, or the product fails to set the market alight, it almost always comes back to you and your team, and you’ll need to pick up the pieces.

In addition to the articles providing more detail about what went wrong at Sonos, I have articles for you from Marc Abraham and Julian Dunn describing how they cope with the pressure of product management. Eira Hayward also rounds up a selection of advice from Marc and others about how they recovered from a failed product launch.

Speak to you soon,

Jock

* Watch the original Top Gun movie to get the reference.

** 12 percent (~230 employees) mid-pandemic in June 2020, 7 percent (~130) in June 2023, and a further 6 percent (~100) in August 2024.

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what to think about this week

Sonos, software, and Stockholm syndrome: what went wrong in 2024

Sonos owners have been in their own special circle of hell since mid-May, when a now-infamous update to the Sonos app and the platform as a whole went very, very wrong.

Held hostage by a broken system

[Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends]

Sonos workers shed light on why the app update went so horribly

Meetings with “yelling,” “screaming” preceded app’s release, Bloomberg reports.

Internal frustrations because the app wasn’t ready

[Scharon Harding / Ars Technica]

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My product management toolkit (32): managing your frustrations

Every job or organisation comes with its own pressures and challenges. Millions of people will have a bad day at work, some people probably more frequently than others 🙂 That said, I believe that being a product manager can be one of the more frustrating roles out there.

The life of a product manager is one filled with frustrations

[Marc Abraham]

Lessons learned when a product launch fails

As much as we tell ourselves that we learn, adapt and grow stronger from failure, it can be a bitter pill to swallow. However most products fail, so product managers need to be robust in their approach to failure.

Refine your strategies for future launches

[Eira Hayward / Mind The Product]

How to handle high pressure in product management: a practical guide

I’ve had some dark days as a Product Manager. Here are a few tricks I’ve learned to help with the toughest days.

Steer emotion into logic

[Julian Dunn / Product Coalition]

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PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from a bargain writing desk.