@evanwolf
The Things I Don’t Know About Product Retirement Could Fill A Slide Deck
Phil Wolff Product Grim Reaper Graceful Exits at Let My Data Go.org
My Ignorance On Display as a Research Agenda
#prodmgmt #eol #killthepwoduct
#producthospice #gracefulexit
#productmanagement
@evanwolf
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All products die.
We put them down when their time is up.
@evanwolf
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But we don’t talk about it.
@evanwolf
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So product managers have little knowledge and less experience in the end-of-life stage.
@evanwolf
Done Map
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Deploy
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Maybe you’ll have answers to some of these questions. Or know someone. Or have a theory or a story.
@evanwolf
How often do organizations agree on product retirement criteria before needing to kill a product? Is preplanning rare?
@evanwolf
How do chiefs commonly judge the success of retirement projects?
No problems vs. Value vs. Speed
@evanwolf
Why do product managers delay pulling the trigger?
Hope
Weak data
Lack of consensus
Distraction
@evanwolf
How do organization attributes affect speed of product exit decision making?
How does size affect how fast and how crisply you make exit decisions?
@evanwolf
Is it better to turn things off earlier or later?
You prepare, then turn things off and respond to fallout.
When are you better off…
• closing early to see what things break? • (and breaking more things, breaking them worse, but giving
you more time to respond)
or
• thoroughly preparing a seamless closure? • (minimizing breakage quantity and severity)?
@evanwolf
What triggers a “farewell visit”?
A consumer farewell visit might be for…
• Saying “goodbye” to friends in the system
• Data export/migration
• Petition to restore features, products, services
• Learn terms of retirement
Q. What induces the farewell visit?
Q. What converts a farewell visit into action?
@evanwolf
What percent of retirement projects are…
Bullet to the Back Of The Head?
Graceful Exits?
Something in between?
@evanwolf
What percent of retirement projects fail and restart?
% fail and restart within 90 days
% fail and restart 2 times
% fail and restart 3+ times
% fail and don’t restart
@evanwolf
What percent of retirement projects dispose of the product via
Killing it
Harvesting and recycling parts
Selling it
Donating it
@evanwolf
Where does the retirement team come from?
• __% The existing product team
• __% Elsewhere in the organization
• __% In-house product retirement specialists
• __% Outside product retirement specialists
@evanwolf
What percent of retirement teams work together killing products multiple times in a year?
Does reaper expertise live in groups, in individuals, or not at all?
@evanwolf
How many product closures do 1000 product managers lead per year?
@evanwolf
How many weeks per year do product managers spend on product closure?
@evanwolf
What percent of product endings result in something other than shutting down?
% handed off to another part of the organization
% sold to a company
% donated to an NGO
% released to open source
@evanwolf
Why do some retirement projects get stalled in the execution stage?
% Underfunded
% Key people missing
% Contractual commitments
% Regulatory duty
% Unwilling to break dependent systems
% Hope
@evanwolf
How do organizations respond when customers protest product closure?
@evanwolf
Who are the decision makers in product retirement?
Who makes recommendations and who decides?
• Product
• Marketing
• Engineering
• Finance
• CEO/COO
@evanwolf
What ToS/EULA elements help or hinder a graceful exit?
@evanwolf
How, and how well, do leaders of product closure projects deal with the strong feelings of the product’s teams?
@evanwolf
What constitutes meaningful notice to customers?
By industry/segment
By geography
By age
@evanwolf
What communication plans work best for meaningful notice?
@evanwolf
What are the best ways to tell the product team “your product is about to die”?
@evanwolf
What constitutes meaningful notice to independent developers and other business partners?
@evanwolf
What regulatory trends affect product termination? Product disposal?
@evanwolf
What works to keep key personnel working until retirement is complete?
@evanwolf
How do you value a retirement project that goes well?
@evanwolf
Does the shift from creation to destruction harm the product team after the retirement?
Does it lose unit cohesion?
Is there some institutional version of PTSD?
Or is it a useful break? A lagniappe?
@evanwolf
How common are data portability practices in product retirements? How strong? Frequency • No portability
• Contributed data export
• API/json
• Profiles
• Contacts
• Conversations & Gestures
• History
• Migration tools
Factors correlated with high portability and low portability • Org size
• Industry/Customer Segment
• Product revenue
• Funding type/stage
@evanwolf
What does the law say about shutting down a service or ending a product’s life
Jurisdictions?
US? California, New York, Texas?
EU? UK?
Japan? Canada, Commonwealth?
BRIC?
Bodies of law?
Privacy/data protection
Consumer/patient/client protection
Telecom
Anti-trust
@evanwolf
How often do IT organizations and startups have repeatable practices for shutting down products?
Many products
Few
Brief Long
Portfolio
Product Lifespan
Lots of Experience
Startups
Startups
@evanwolf
What are the differences between great product champions and great project reapers?
@evanwolf
What are the differences between great product champions and great project reapers?
Passion vs. Dispassion
Sense and Respond vs. Map and Conquer
Soft Power vs. Formal Authority
Continuous Process vs. Hard Deadlines
Creater vs. Destroyer
Mark on the world vs. No trace left behind
@evanwolf
How do core values affect exit project tradeoffs?
@evanwolf
What are the most common reasons given for a fast, rough, bullet-to-the-back-of-the-head product closure? The real reasons?
@evanwolf
To what degree do product communities stay together and migrate when a product dies? Why? Why not?
@evanwolf
What are the seven best discussions to have in a product team debriefing workshop?
@evanwolf
Do companies reward or penalize retirement project managers differently than they do product managers?
@evanwolf
“You come back from lunch and are told to shut down your product by the end of the day. Could you? How well? What would you expect to go wrong?”
@evanwolf
What HR issues are most likely to screw up an otherwise clean product retirement project?
@evanwolf
What financial reports are most useful in a post-retirement product review?
@evanwolf
Done Map
Stage
Kill? How?
Deploy
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Plan
Let me ask you a few questions about your own product hospice experiences.
@evanwolf
Done Map
Stage
Kill? How?
Deploy
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Plan Are you ready to prepare for end-of-life while your product is still healthy?
@evanwolf
Done Map
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Kill? How?
Deploy
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Plan Can you shift to the happily grim mindset of a reaper?
@evanwolf
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Are you, your product’s champion, best suited and best prepared to deal death to your own products?
@evanwolf
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It’s time for a new #prodmgmt specialty.
The Reaper.
@evanwolf
Share your product death stories to improve reaping
Your stories from real product endings
Anecdotes tell us what to test
Instrumented experiments
Share hard data
Surveys
How people think
Prediction markets
Test conclusions
@evanwolf
Product Reaping could become a standalone product management discipline
More science, less art
More ROI, less housekeeping
More brand building, less brand protection
More experience, less “ooh, that’s a wheel”
More up front planning and prep, less last minute scramble
More reaping ecosystem:
• apps (or features in #prodmgmt apps)
• markets (for selling features, products)
• services (project support)
@evanwolf
Done Map
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Kill? How?
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Thanks!
Done
@evanwolf
Phil Wolff Hi!
Email or tweet your stories, suggestions, referrals or just call/skype
Phil Wolff is a consulting product manager in Oakland, California. Phil co-founded four startups,
worked as a programmer, project manager, business analyst, technology architect, industry analyst,
operations researcher, and tech journalist at Bechtel National, Wang Labs, LSI Logic, Adecco SA, NavSup,
and privacy NGOs. He volunteers in Code for America’s #OpenOakland brigade.
e [email protected] skype evanwolf v +1-510-343-5664 t @evanwolf @letmydatago bio About.me/evanwolf cv Linkedin.com/in/philwolff blog Letmydatago.org
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