The document discusses many open questions and unknowns regarding end-of-life processes for retiring and shutting down products. It poses over 50 questions on topics such as how organizations determine when to retire products, how product managers and teams experience retiring products, how customers are notified, and how data is handled. The questions are intended to help identify gaps in knowledge and experience around the under-discussed topic of product retirement.

1. The Things I Don’t Know
About Product Retirement
Could Fill A Slide Deck
My Ignorance On Display as a
Research Agenda
Phil Wolff
Product Grim Reaper
Graceful Exits at Let My Data Go.org
#prodmgmt #eol
#killthepwoduct
#producthospice
#gracefulexit
#productmanagement
@evanwolf

2. Done
All products
die.
Signals
Kill?
We put
them down
when their
time is up.
Map
Plan
How?
Stage
Deploy
Close Out
Done
@evanwolf

3. Done
Signals
Map
Kill?
How?
But we
Plan
don’t talk
about Stage
it.
Deploy
Close Out
Done
@evanwolf

4. Done
So product
managers
Signals
Kill?
have little
knowledge
and less
experience
in the endof-life stage.
Map
Plan
How?
Stage
Deploy
Close Out
Done
@evanwolf

5. Done
Signals
Map
Kill?
How?
Maybe
you’ll have
Plan
answers to
Stage
some of
these
Deploy
questions.
Or know
Close Out
someone.
Or have a
theory Done a
or
story.
@evanwolf

6. How often do organizations agree
on product retirement criteria
before needing to kill a product?
Is preplanning rare?
@evanwolf

7. How do chiefs commonly judge the
success of retirement projects?
No problems vs. Value vs. Speed
@evanwolf

8. Why do product managers delay
pulling the trigger?
Hope
Weak data
Lack of consensus
Distraction
@evanwolf

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. What percent of retirement projects
are…
Bullet to the Back Of The Head?
Graceful Exits?
Something in between?
@evanwolf

13. 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

14. What percent of retirement projects
dispose of the product via
Killing it
Harvesting and recycling parts
Selling it
Donating it
@evanwolf

15. 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

16. 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

17. How many product closures do
1000 product managers lead per
year?
@evanwolf

18. How many weeks per year do
product managers spend on
product closure?
@evanwolf

19. 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

20. 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

21. How do organizations respond
when customers protest product
closure?
@evanwolf

22. Who are the decision makers in
product retirement?
Who makes recommendations and who decides?
• Product
• Marketing
• Engineering
• Finance
• CEO/COO
@evanwolf

23. What ToS/EULA elements help or
hinder a graceful exit?
@evanwolf

24. How, and how well, do leaders of
product closure projects deal with
the strong feelings of the product’s
teams?
@evanwolf

25. What constitutes meaningful notice
to customers?
By industry/segment
By geography
By age
@evanwolf

26. What communication plans work
best for meaningful notice?
@evanwolf

27. What are the
best ways to
tell the product
team “your
product is
about to die”?
@evanwolf

28. What constitutes meaningful notice
to independent developers and
other business partners?
@evanwolf

29. What regulatory trends affect
product termination? Product
disposal?
@evanwolf

30. What works to keep key personnel
working until retirement is
complete?
@evanwolf

31. How do you value a retirement
project that goes well?
@evanwolf

32. 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

33. How common are data portability
practices in product retirements?
How strong?
Frequency
• No portability
• Contributed data export
• API/json
• Profiles
• Contacts
• Conversations & Gestures
Factors correlated with
high portability and low
portability
• Org size
• Industry/Customer Segment
• Product revenue
• Funding type/stage
• History
• Migration tools
@evanwolf

34. What does the law say about
shutting down a service or ending
a product’s life
Jurisdictions?
Bodies of law?
US?
California, New York, Texas?
Privacy/data protection
EU? UK?
Consumer/patient/client
protection
Japan? Canada,
Commonwealth?
Telecom
BRIC?
Anti-trust
@evanwolf

35. How often do IT organizations and startups have
repeatable practices for shutting down products?
Many
products
Lots of
Experi
ence
Portfolio
Few
Startup
s
Startup
s
Brief
Long
Product Lifespan
@evanwolf

36. What are the differences between
great product champions and
great project reapers?
@evanwolf

37. 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

38. How do core values affect exit
project tradeoffs?
@evanwolf

39. What are the
most common
reasons given
for a fast,
rough, bulletto-the-back-ofthe-head
product
closure? The
real reasons?
@evanwolf

40. To what degree do product
communities stay together and
migrate when a product dies?
Why?
Why not?
@evanwolf

41. What are the seven best
discussions to have in a product
team debriefing workshop?
@evanwolf

42. Do companies reward or penalize
retirement project managers
differently than they do product
managers?
@evanwolf

43. “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

44. What HR issues are most likely to
screw up an otherwise clean
product retirement project?
@evanwolf

45. What financial reports are most
useful in a post-retirement product
review?
@evanwolf

46. Done
Let me ask
you a fewKill?
Signals
questions
about your
own product
hospice
experiences.
Map
Plan
How?
Stage
Deploy
Close Out
Done
@evanwolf

47. Done
Signals
Map
Kill?
How?
Are you
Plan
ready to
Stage
prepare for
end-of-life
Deploy
while your
Close is
product Out
still
healthy?
Done
@evanwolf

48. Done
Signals
Map
Kill?
How?
Can you
Plan
shift to the
Stage
happily
grim
Deploy
mindset of
Close Out
a reaper?
Done
@evanwolf

49. Done
Are you,
your
Signals
Kill?
product’s
champion,
best suited
and best
prepared to
deal death
to your own
products?
Map
Plan
How?
Stage
Deploy
Close Out
Done
@evanwolf

50. Done
It’s time for
aSignals
new
Kill?
#prodmgmt
specialty.
Map
Plan
How?
Stage
Deploy
The Reaper.
Close Out
Done
@evanwolf

51. 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

52. 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

53. Done
Map
Plan
Signals
Kill?
How?
Stage
Thanks!
Deploy
Close Out
Done
@evanwolf

54. Phil Wolff
Hi!
Email or tweet
your stories,
suggestions,
referrals
or just call/skype
e
skype
v
t
phil@LetMyDataGo.org
evanwolf
+1-510-343-5664
@evanwolf @letmydatago
bio
cv
blog
About.me/evanwolf
Linkedin.com/in/philwolff
Letmydatago.org
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.
@evanwolf