the things i don't know about product retirement could fill a slide deck

@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

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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

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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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Done

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 phil@LetMyDataGo.org skype evanwolf v +1-510-343-5664 t @evanwolf @letmydatago bio About.me/evanwolf cv Linkedin.com/in/philwolff blog Letmydatago.org