April 2nd 2011

Product SunsettingPeter Morano and Tim Courtney

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Introductions

• Tim Courtney– Director, Marketing and Brand Strategy at KeyLimeTie– Tireless customer and user experience advocate. – Co-founder of SocialDevCamp Chicago.

• Peter Morano– CIO at KeyLimeTie– Developing software for 16 years

De Facto Product Managers

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Format

• Roundtable• Open Participation

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Product Sunsetting

• Sunsetting is the process of pulling a product from market. The term can also be applied to removing obsolete features from a product.

• Sunsetting involves making the business decision to remove the product or feature and then communicating that decision to customers and sales channel.

• Planning for this is not the same as expecting it.

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Reasons

• Profitability• Strategic Fit

– Heading into a new direction.

• Portfolio Fit• Market factors

– Don’t be the company where “old technology goes to die.”

• Technology – Keeping products past their prime confuses, distracts

and annoys (IE6?).

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Why is this a big deal?

• If you mishandle this you could damage your brand.– Kin?– Yahoo/Delicious

• Change is often perceived as negative by many customers.

• Could result in “opening the account”

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Why should I care?

• How do we get out of this gracefully, without losing money and antagonizing our customers?

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Solution

• Get customers to understand why you’re doing it and how it affects them.

• Explain the business decisions.• Be clear

– Nobody likes ambiguity. You don’t want them thinking “okay, what does this really mean?”

• Tell them their options.

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Discussion

• Your thoughts and experience– Have you managed a sunset?– Have you experienced a product sunset as a

consumer? How was it handled?

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