In my previous posts about killing features and products, I talked about prevention (avoiding the creation of over-complicated and unnecessary functionalities or products) and symptoms (how to track and measure if a specific functionality or product should be killed). So, having a way of measuring and marking potential features or products for removal, brings us to the final big step – Shooting the zombies down. So how do we do that?
1. (Aim) Talk with sales, marketing, support
First you start with aiming. You need to prepare and plan it, just like you do with the development of any new functionality or product. You need to discuss it and get all of the relevant stakeholders (e.g. sales, finance, marketing, support, legal, etc.) on-board. While doing it, make sure you present them the symptoms you have measured and identified, nobody likes to kill things. But it’s hard to go against the fact that for example a product or functionality is not used or brings low value and at the same time costs you “X” man hours/days per month just to make sure it works.
Some of the topics which should be covered during the planning of the killing are:
- Make sure that stopping this feature or product does not contradict with any contracts, SLA agreements or other commitments you have made;
- Work on the dependencies, the business coordination and the communication plan with all relevant stakeholders;
- Check that you have stopped the marketing of the feature or product;
- Make sure the killing is considered in Sales’ plans and Finance’s forecasts;
- Provide support to Customer Support and prepare them for what is coming – more about this in step 3;
- Provide direction and guidance to the Technology team;
- Secure customer data and how they can export it. ThisIsMyJam is a good example.
Once we make sure that everything is ready and prepared we can proceed with the next step:
2. (Shoot) It is like a regular release
As mentioned earlier this process should be the same as your regular release process. Based on the planning, you execute. You can add a short summary of the reasons and the plan in order to achieve better involvement. A good tip when removing a feature or a product is to hide it first, and then delete it completely.
3. (Pray) Prepare for unhappy customers
Even if you have notified and communicated with your customers that something will be removed, you will get the angry and unhappy calls and emails. That’s the point where we have to decide as a company whether we want to keep them or let them go.
4. (Bonus step) Avoid the slaughter
There are some alternatives to killing features or products which might be considered, depending on the case.
- Transition to a new feature – you can move your customers to a new, better working, easier to support and more value-adding product. Just make sure you don’t migrate your customers to a new feature or product in the middle of their project, the chances of dissatisfaction are bigger.
- Make them pay extra for you to keep the dead feature or product alive. As TheVerge had reported “Australian electronics retailer Kogan is “taxing” Internet Explorer 7 users 6.8 percent at the checkout for using the older browser.“
Killing features or products will help us focus, free up resources and create products that customers love. Try to hide or kill a feature every week – as Dave McClure puts it into his presentation you should stop adding features and focus on improving the ones your customers love. And the way to figure out what your customers love is by constantly removing things until they scream, meaning you have found it. Then you will have to bring it back and make it even better.
Read More
How to Survive the Product Zombie Apocalypse – Chriss Massey
https://www.mindtheproduct.com/survive-product-zombie-apocalypse/
Startup Metrics for Pirates / KILL a Feature (FOWA London, Oct 2009) – Dave McClure
https://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-fowa-london-oct-2009/17-KILL_A_FEATURE_Something_Sucks
How To Be A Good Product Manager – Jeff Lash
https://www.goodproductmanager.com/2008/02/17/do-not-be-afraid-to-remove-features/
To Kill a Product: Why, When and How (Part 3) – Chris Brown
https://onproductmanagement.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/to-kill-a-product-why-when-and-how-part-13/
