Your product needs an Advance Directive

You’ll kill your new product. Someday. Plan now.
Compose an advance directive for your product.

When you launch is the perfect time to list criteria for product retirement.

List your own key indicators. Cash flow, user growth, retention, place in the portfolio, whatever signals you’ll find helpful.

Then, for each, set Early Warning and Crash Cart thresholds.

• “In the event my product no longer contributes more than $X in positive cash flow in a month…”

You want criteria you can easily measure.

• “When net user growth is less than Y percent monthly for a full quarter…”

You want criteria that reflect the hopes for your product.

• “When user retention falls under Z%…”

Choose criteria that reveal your product’s health.

• “When this is the worst performing product in my portfolio for three months…”

Add criteria that position this product against your other products.

• “When the product’s NPV falls below what we’re hoping for from a new product…”

And look for signals that you could be using these resources better elsewhere.

Write them down in your product’s Advance Directive document.

Then track your signals.

Set up alerts for when the things you’re tracking cross Warning and Emergency thresholds.

Make a list of the people (or roles) who should review the product when the alerts light up. Key stakeholders and decision makers? You know them. Drop a quick note to let them know you’ll call on them for an end-of-life decision.

Set the alerts to automatically convene a “death panel” for this product.

Then forget about it.

Go about making your product successful. Build teams. Solve problems. Leave the world a better place.

Until you get the alerts.

Death Panel — Assemble!

Something’s wrong, team.

Compare our alerts to our original goals.

Are we tracking the right measures? No? What data do we need?

Are the right people in the room to make a decision? No? Let’s get them.

What’s our decision?

Life?

Thank your panel and go back to work. Reset the trackers and alerts. Write up and circulate the meeting minutes.

Death?

Time to initiate your project retirement project. But that’s another post.

I’m Phil Wolff, product manager, Reaper, and host of Product Hospice. This is part of a longer work on managing product end-of-life with skill, speed, and grace. @evanwolf.