Product Collective - 🌅 Sunsetting a product

How to Sunset a Product

Removing features or shutting down your entire product is not something most Product Managers look forward to. All the same, sunsetting products allows you to focus on other products that help your customers and drive value for your business. Of course you have to manage the sunsetting properly to make sure the customers of the product you are sunsetting switch over to your new product. Here are some tips on how to handle the switch. 

The art of unshipping: How to deprioritize features, phase out projects and sunset products. When you veer away from your product vision out of fear of upsetting users, your product is bound to become outdated, overly complicated, and bloated with technical debt. Not that you should ignore user requests or phase out features for no reason. Sometimes, the best thing you can do to create a better user experience is to delete rather than add. Jory Mackay explains how to deprioritize features your users want, sunset ones they love, and commit to an innovative yet risky roadmap.
(via @JoryMacKay)

5 tips for product marketers working on a feature sunset. Most product marketers love a big product launch. A big sunset? Not so much. However, sun setting products and features is important work. If your team thinks about a sunset as an innovation event (hint: you should), then it’s important to be just as strategic about removing a feature from your product as you are about adding one. Marcus Andrews shares some tips for a product marketer working on a sunset (or a product leader in need of your product marketing counterpart) to keep in mind. 
(via @pendoio)

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Goodbye, Internet Explorer

I remember seeing the news a couple months back that it was finally going to happen – Internet Explorer would officially be retiring. And then it finally happened. Just last month, Internet Explorer packed up its boxes, so to speak, and rode off into the sunset. 

It may not seem like such a surprise or even a big deal, as there are so many other browsers today that we’ve all gotten used to using. But really, it’s a very big deal. For a while, it was the de facto internet browser that most of us used to access the internet. 

So what really happened with Internet Explorer, anyway? Two big reasons stand out…

1. First, it refused to follow along with the World Wide Web Consortium guidelines on how web pages should be laid out, which made pages displayed on IE just look… weird… compared to other browsers.
2. Competition not only came into the space, but continued to innovate. Google Chrome was launched in 2008. That alone was a big blow, as Google already had its hold on search. But in the decade after Google Chrome launched – it was updated 70 times compared to just 4 from Internet Explorer. It wasn’t just that competition existed, but the competition was improving more and more while Internet Explorer got stale.

Seeing the demise of Internet Explorer can probably teach us all something. First, we shouldn’t assume to know what’s best for users. Microsoft assumed that it didn’t need to follow WC3 guidelines, when really – doing so would have made for a better experience for consumers. And while competition is inevitable, we can’t let the competition out-innovate us. We have to always strive to improve our products. Our products are never “done.”

Tonight, if you find yourself with an end-of-day drink to celebrate the upcoming weekend, pour a little bit out for Internet Explorer. It may be gone today, but its legacy of being one of the first big browsers out there will certainly live on.

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How to correctly sunset a feature. As well as developing new features, teams must also consider killing off older features and/or features that are not delivering on their promise. Removing a feature allows teams to direct their time and energy towards more profitable pursuits. Retiring or sun setting features requires careful planning and consideration across various teams. Just as you would onboard users to new features, consider how to off-board users when killing a feature to allow them to see additional value in your product. Rowan Haddad walks you through how to correctly and efficiently sunset a feature with minimal negative impact on your customers and helps you decide whether it’s truly time to let a particular feature go.
(via @feature_flags)

Sunsetting a product: What you need to know for your B2B. Deciding to sunset a product can be difficult. When your efforts to improve user engagement fail, killing a feature or the entire product might be what you need. But first, you need to consider multiple teams and stakeholders, customers, and the overall impact it has on your business. If you’re not sure where to start, Andrea Saez put together a guide to assist you through the sunsetting process.
(via @dreasaez)

End of life. Eventually your product will reach it’s end of life, what some Product Managers refer to as the sunset of the product. As with all previous phases in the product life cycle, this phase also has to be managed. It is a mistake for a product manager to believe that when a product reaches the end of its life, the work of product management ends. This phase requires as much attention as the previous ones. Joca Torres explains how to decide when to sunset your product and how to manage that process.
(via @JocaTorres)

The Role of an AI Product Manager

AI is a lifecycle that requires the integration of data, machine learning models, and the software around it. It covers everything from scoping and designing to building and testing all the way through to deployment — and eventually requires frequent monitoring. AI Product managers need to ensure that data scientists are delivering results in efficient ways so business counterparts can understand, interpret, and use it to learn from. This includes everything from the definition of the problem, the coverage and quality of the data set and its analysis, to the presentation of results and the follow-up. In this discussion, we'll cover all of this — plus, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions of your own!

Product Manager, Home Depot, Atlanta, GA, USA, Remote
Senior Product Manager, Home Depot, Atlanta, GA, USA, Remote
Product Management Manager, Home Depot, Atlanta, GA, USA, Remote

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