Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Either full transparency (probably more adequate to your company's culture) or with a bit of humour like: The demand on the black market is so overwhelmingly that it even didn't reach the warehouse or it longer than expected to get this one-of-it's-kind innovation from mars. Good luck

Assuming you already announced a roll out date of March 2009:

Because we put the quality and safety of our products above all else, the release of our new PRODUCTLINE which we originally forcasted for March 2009 has met with a small delay as our Quality Auditors further test to ensure that we meet and exceed stringent safety and quality standards. Look for our new PRODUCTLINE in July 2009.

Marketing-Riot

I do not think it is necessary to announce why the date is changed. Any explanation sounds like excuses or there were problems. If there were problems are there still? That is what I would be thinking.

I would announce "Product A that was reported as being available March 2009 will not be available until July 2009"

I would be absolutely sure the deadline will be met. You do not want to do this again. I might acutally announce August 2009 and bust my but to get it done by June 2009 and pleasantly surprise people.

Mike

If I'm working on a project for you and I run into a delay, would you prefer me to:

1. Tell the whole story (be too honest).
2. Tell you why I'm delayed and good reasons why or why I'm delayed and negative reasons why yet offering both of us an opportunity to correct any issues for the future.
3. Don't tell you anything and just go with the new date, ignoring the initial and not telling you anything.

My vote is to turn a negative into a positive but then again it is your call.

Marketing-Riot

The problem with not announcing any reasons behind the delay is that the press will pick up on that. In my experience, the tend to hate it when they think companies aren't being straight with them. They could make up their own story!

Not sure this is possible with hardware, but when I've managed software products and had a delay, we often added in a couple of easily added features that were wanted by our market. We always underpromised feature sets so most of the time these were things that might have made the final release anyway.

Then the delay could be blamed on additional testing to make sure that these features were ready for our customers. Not entirely true since the testing wasn't only due to the new features, but it softened the blow for our customers.

If that's not possible, I would blame the delay on additional testing as was suggested above. It's accurate and easily understandable. Run the announcement by a couple of your trusted customers. They will tell you if it sounds like you don't have confidence in the product.

Finally, it's always helpful to go back and review what you can learn from every experience. e.g. if you didn't say the initial date was a "target" date in the announcement, you can see why that's a good thing to do. Since software testing is fairly unpredictable, often you'll hear companies like Microsoft use release dates like "Summer 2009." You might also go back and study how Microsoft announces their delays since they often miss their nebulous release dates.

All the best!

Melissa