Retiring a Product
The last and final stage of the 9II9 product lifecycle is Retire. Removing a product from the market can be a formal or informal process. A formal process involves sending a series of messages to existing users leading up to the removal of the product, and a follow-up after the product is no longer available for use or download. An informal process typically happens when the need to remove the product is caused by events that are beyond the control of the Product Manager. For example, a vendor may decide to no longer support a specific hardware device, or a service that powers the core features of the product may suddenly cease operations. In some cases, a product may go into maintenance mode, in which there is no new feature development for the product due to business priorities, but the product remains in the market and only bug fixes are made.
A key consideration for determining when to remove a product from the market or to continue to invest in new feature development is whether or not a product is meeting defined KPIs. Other considerations are the cost of supporting a product in “maintenance mode” vs fully focusing development and operational resources on new product development.
When a Product Manager is required to formally remove a product from the market, an End of Life plan is created and executed to properly manage the retirement process. An End of Life document explains when support will cease for the product along with specific actions that need to be taken before and after the product is removed from the market.
Below is a sample End of Life Process for removing a collection of English and Arabic language apps from the market. Drop an email if you would like to have a copy of this template.
Example contents and sections that are contained within an End of Life Plan
End of life process milestones, definitions, and dates.
Products affected by this notification and the replacement products.
Compatibility of the replacement products.
Current active users that will be impacted by the change
Tactics for reaching and communicating with current active users.
As an example, let’s take a look at a sample milestone plan for retiring a mobile app product from the market. Imagine a table with 3 headings, Milestone, Definition, and Timeline that contains 7 milestones.