All good things eventually come to an end, some sooner that we’d like, others not soon enough. The same thing goes for features on your product, or your entire product. Sunsetting a feature or a product is not a bad thing. You may be sunsetting an existing product because you’re introducing something new. If that is the case, how you end the life of one product may influence whether customers start a new life with its replacement.
4 Best practices for effective product end-of-life management. The technological landscape is continuously evolving. This ongoing change limits the lifespan of all technical devices, and makes End-of-Life (EOL) planning one of the most critical phases of the technology life cycle. End-of-life product management is a critical element in product lifecycle management; and becomes a priority when an OEM no longer produces, sells or provides upgrades, fixes or other related services for specific technology hardware or software — making them obsolete. Rachel Zachar describes practices your organization can apply to navigate product end-of-life challenges.
(via @DynamicTech_Sol)
Software product end of life and why it is good for your business. You may have heard the term end of life or EOL used with some of your favorite business or personal software. Grant Howe explains that end of life happens when you make a decision not to continue to sell or maintain the product past a specific date that you publish. There’s a variety of criteria to take into account when deciding to EOL a product. Grant discusses a few of them and why they are good for you and your business.
(via @ECiSolutions)
Minimum Viable Replacement: A new framework for retiring old systems. Are you engaged in a digital transformation initiative, working to retire systems as part of a merger and integration project, or sunsetting a legacy product? If so, then you may want to find out more about a new concept, the Minimum Viable Replacement. Kevin Mireles introduces the Minimum Viable Replacement idea and explains how it can help you avoid using the wrong strategy for retiring and replacing existing systems.
(via @MindtheProduct)
Upsides to Unshipping: The art of removing features and products. Teams are praised whenever they release a new feature (or product) to their customers. Now, what if your team was honored just as much — or even more — when you successfully deprecate features and products? Neil Rahilly, Casey Winters, Fareed Mosavat, Keya Patel introduce the concept of “unshipping” and explain when you should unship, why unshipping can be grueling, the problems you may face, and how to successfully sunset a feature or product.
(via @reforge)
How to effectively sunset a feature from your product. Products go into obsolescence primarily due to two reasons – functional obsolescence or fashion obsolescence. This has led to the creation of a formal end-of-life plan for many companies. Mei Luo explains how an end-of-life plan has become a strategically important tool that steers higher annual recurring revenue, helps smooth transition between two different business models, and improves the lifetime customer value.
(via @pendoio)
