Product Lifecycle & Exit Strategy Worksheet
Use when you need to answer: "What is this product's current lifecycle stage, and what would responsible retirement require?"
Plan for renewal, transition, or retirement as a deliberate part of product strategy, not an afterthought.
Core Question
-
What is this product's current lifecycle stage, and what would responsible retirement require?
What to Document
-
Lifecycle stage: Launch, Growth, Maturity, Decline, Transition
-
Current customer value, operating cost, reliability, support burden, relevance
-
If exiting: customer transition, communication, alternatives, migration, data handling, contracts, knowledge transfer
Common Mistake to Avoid
-
Letting a product continue by default long after its customer value and its operating cost have crossed, with no retirement plan in place.
Illustrative Example
-
A legacy manual follow-up tracker is retired only after account managers are fully transitioned to the automated workflow and historical data has been exported.