Product Lifecycle Plays

Purpose

Decide what to do with a product that has stopped growing. There are three plays — extend, replace, retire — and picking the wrong one is expensive in a different way each time. This skill gives you the stage diagnosis, the criteria that discriminate the plays, and the hazard register for the one that goes wrong most often.

Most teams skip straight to a play. Someone says "let's rebuild it" or "let's kill it," and the argument that follows is about the answer rather than the diagnosis. The diagnosis is the work.

Input

Works best with: The product or product line, and the signal that prompted the question — flattening revenue, rising support costs, a competitor move, a strategy shift.

Also useful: Revenue and margin trend, customer counts and concentration, support load, what else in the portfolio is adjacent, and how much investment appetite exists.