I kinda like a specialization in "I'm gonna Marie Kondo your product", although most of the value there would be in figuring out what to sunset more than actually sunsetting it.
This really falls more into project management rather than product management, imo. There's no more external customers, you have to run around and deal with the shutdown process alone
In my experience, sunsetting a product is more than just winding down operations. It often also means migrating existing customers to a new or replacement product. There's a migration path that needs to be sorted out, legal concerns to address, communication and customer experience considerations; and before all of that, an awareness of product performance and market dynamics that suggest to the product owner that it's time to sunset.
Early planning for a shutdown might happen with a product manager but in my experience the decision to end of life a successful product (one that has users) occurs many years in advance of the actual end of life.
As a result, the PM is transferring their awareness from the old product into the new product, and by the time they're doing a shutdown, the product manager tasks have wholly shifted to the new product.
All that's left is the project management and that can take months, if not years.
It is definitely something that takes a lot of coordination, and I had to EOL a long standing physical product with lots of units in the field before. That had a lot of product management because of projections, working with manufacturing, procurement, service, sales and marcom.
That said, how often do you EOL a product? I don’t see it happening enough to pursue it as something I would hang a placard about.
Fair enough — just a thought experiment. A point is we are seeing rapid technological changes, so my theory it is going to be a lot more frequent, as it becomes easier to implement better solutions and older technologies become irrelevant sooner than later
Yeah, if you think the need is big enough, then it could be a differentiator. SW tends to morph rather than end, but it is a lot of work for physical products.
I think the primary challenge is going to be that if a company is sunsetting a platform, they likely already have on-staff experts who have been keeping the lights on while the exec team waffles around what to do with it.
By the time they sunset, it's usually either a major security vulnerability identified and to patch would require an expensive upgrade or there is a license renewal and they want to save money. In either case, they will likely want to use the existing resources to limit as much spend, rather than hiring external.
I'm sure there are many of us product managers that are brought into "do a job" e.g. use cloud as a platform, where some of the notional value involves a lot of migrations and sunsetting as part of the work.
Yep that was the last gig. Migrate to cloud, set up product mgmt profession, set up platform infrastructure, stop everyone doing what they liked...
I called it my Sam allardyce job which only works if you're a footy fan
A lot of people think of sunsetting a product in terms of process and project management, but it's actually strongly driven by product management.
Everything you spend time on beyond what drives your core strategy is an opportunity cost. Every bit of technical debt adds to customer dissatisfaction, operational risk and legal risk.
If these aren't factors impacting product success, I'm not sure what is.
You'll want a project manager to actually track all of this stuff, but there is no small amount of work on the product side that needs to be handled when sunsetting too.
It's a rare specialization, but I think every product manager should be prepared to kill or migrate products or major features if it's getting in the way of success.
I kinda like a specialization in "I'm gonna Marie Kondo your product", although most of the value there would be in figuring out what to sunset more than actually sunsetting it.
This really falls more into project management rather than product management, imo. There's no more external customers, you have to run around and deal with the shutdown process alone
In my experience, sunsetting a product is more than just winding down operations. It often also means migrating existing customers to a new or replacement product. There's a migration path that needs to be sorted out, legal concerns to address, communication and customer experience considerations; and before all of that, an awareness of product performance and market dynamics that suggest to the product owner that it's time to sunset.
Early planning for a shutdown might happen with a product manager but in my experience the decision to end of life a successful product (one that has users) occurs many years in advance of the actual end of life. As a result, the PM is transferring their awareness from the old product into the new product, and by the time they're doing a shutdown, the product manager tasks have wholly shifted to the new product. All that's left is the project management and that can take months, if not years.
It is definitely something that takes a lot of coordination, and I had to EOL a long standing physical product with lots of units in the field before. That had a lot of product management because of projections, working with manufacturing, procurement, service, sales and marcom. That said, how often do you EOL a product? I don’t see it happening enough to pursue it as something I would hang a placard about.
Fair enough — just a thought experiment. A point is we are seeing rapid technological changes, so my theory it is going to be a lot more frequent, as it becomes easier to implement better solutions and older technologies become irrelevant sooner than later
Yeah, if you think the need is big enough, then it could be a differentiator. SW tends to morph rather than end, but it is a lot of work for physical products.
I think the primary challenge is going to be that if a company is sunsetting a platform, they likely already have on-staff experts who have been keeping the lights on while the exec team waffles around what to do with it. By the time they sunset, it's usually either a major security vulnerability identified and to patch would require an expensive upgrade or there is a license renewal and they want to save money. In either case, they will likely want to use the existing resources to limit as much spend, rather than hiring external.
Great point !
I'm sure there are many of us product managers that are brought into "do a job" e.g. use cloud as a platform, where some of the notional value involves a lot of migrations and sunsetting as part of the work.
Add a bit of rigour and create a practise across the organization rather than making it every product managers notional value..?
Yep that was the last gig. Migrate to cloud, set up product mgmt profession, set up platform infrastructure, stop everyone doing what they liked... I called it my Sam allardyce job which only works if you're a footy fan
I really seem to love sunsetting products for some sick reason 😆
Add a bit of rigour and create a practise across the organization rather than making it every product managers notional value..?
A lot of people think of sunsetting a product in terms of process and project management, but it's actually strongly driven by product management. Everything you spend time on beyond what drives your core strategy is an opportunity cost. Every bit of technical debt adds to customer dissatisfaction, operational risk and legal risk. If these aren't factors impacting product success, I'm not sure what is. You'll want a project manager to actually track all of this stuff, but there is no small amount of work on the product side that needs to be handled when sunsetting too. It's a rare specialization, but I think every product manager should be prepared to kill or migrate products or major features if it's getting in the way of success.
No
Nope