Retiring a Product: How to Gracefully Say Goodbye

Deciding to retire a product isn’t easy, but it’s often necessary to keep your portfolio healthy. Here’s a comprehensive guide to making the call — and doing it right.

Profitability isn’t the only measure of success

Regular financial analysis and profitability tracking can help identify underperforming products early, but profit isn’t the only factor to consider before retiring a product.

• Is it critical to certain customers?
• Does it lead to other purchase decisions?
• Are there new options to reduce costs that don’t negatively impact customer experience?
• Are there other rational business factors to consider?

Nonetheless, if a product costs more to support than it generates in revenue, it’s a potential candidate for retirement. Don’t cling to a sinking ship — focus resources on profitable ventures.

For instance, Google regularly reviews and retires products such as Google+, Google Wave, and Google Reader when they fail to deliver sufficient returns.

For that matter, cutting off the five years of spending on your CTO’s pet “innovation project” that generated no revenue is a pretty good idea.