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eol-process

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项目 README

来源文件:README.md

抓取于 2026年8月10日

Product Manager Skills

GitHub stars License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 PRs Welcome Version Claude Code Plugin Skills

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║   77 battle-tested skills + 6 command workflows                    ║
║   Claude Code • Cursor • Codex  • n8n • OpenClaw • and more ...    ║
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║   v0.84 • August 10, 2026 • CC BY-NC-SA 4.0                        ║
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77 battle-tested PM frameworks, ready for Claude, Codex, ChatGPT, and any agent that can read structured knowledge.


Why This Exists

Generic AI output is a PM's worst enemy. When you tell your agent "write a PRD" without shared context, you get a generic document that no stakeholder trusts and no engineer can act on.

This library gives both you and your AI agent the same professional foundation: the why behind each framework, the failure modes to avoid, and the judgment to apply them correctly. You stop repeating yourself. Your agent stops guessing. The work gets better.

The goal is dual — functional and pedagogic in equal measure. Skills equip agents to do PM work at a professional level, and they teach the human PM the reasoning behind each framework — so you can explain it, adapt it, and pass it on. Neither is a byproduct of the other.


What You Can Get Done

Navigate by what you're actually trying to accomplish:

Framing and strategy

  • problem-framing-canvas — MITRE's Look Inward / Look Outward / Reframe sequence; stops teams from solving the wrong problem
  • positioning-statement — Geoffrey Moore's template for defining who you serve, what you solve, and how you're different
  • product-strategy-session — full strategy arc: positioning → problem framing → solution exploration → roadmap (2-4 weeks)

Stakeholder alignment

  • stakeholder-identification — map every stakeholder before engaging anyone: broad brainstorm → allies/audiences/influencers → R/P/D marking → equity lens → narrow to priority targets
  • stakeholder-mapping — run two complementary grids (Power × Interest for engagement strategy; Impact × Power for whose voice to elevate) and compare to find the gaps
  • stakeholder-engagement-advisor — per-stakeholder engagement planning: diagnoses their profile and context, then delivers tailored message framing, medium, cadence, and a named next action

Customer discovery and research

Prioritization and roadmapping

  • prioritization-advisor — asks 3-5 questions about your context, then recommends RICE, ICE, Kano, or the right alternative
  • epic-breakdown-advisor — splits large epics using Richard Lawrence's 9 patterns
  • roadmap-planning — gather inputs → define epics → prioritize → sequence → communicate (1-2 weeks)

Writing PM deliverables

  • user-story — Mike Cohn format + Gherkin acceptance criteria, with anti-patterns
  • prd-development — structured PRD: problem → personas → solution → metrics → stories (2-4 days)
  • press-release — Amazon Working Backwards: clarify product vision before writing a line of spec

Validation and experimentation

  • pol-probe-advisor — recommends which prototype type to run based on your hypothesis and risk level
  • pol-probe — template for documenting lightweight validation experiments before building

Finance and growth

  • business-health-diagnostic — diagnoses SaaS health across growth, retention, efficiency, and capital using your real metrics
  • organic-growth-advisor — McKinsey Growth Pyramid triage: diagnoses whether your constraint is in new segments, geographies, channels, or products
  • feature-investment-advisor — build / don't build recommendation using revenue impact, cost, ROI, and strategic value

Market and competitive intelligence

Aging products: extend, replace, or retire

  • lifecycle-play-advisor — start here when a product stops growing: seven transition questions establish the stage, then it picks the play — extend, replace, or retire — and tells you when the honest answer is "nothing yet"
  • product-lifecycle-plays — the framework behind that call: the PLC strategy grid, the seven replacement hazards, and a risk register whose last column asks what is Plan B?
  • eol-process — the whole sunset in six phases, decide → align → plan → prepare → announce → close, including the post-EOL review everyone skips
  • The EOL chain: eol-readiness-advisor → eol-stakeholder-sequence → eol-checklist → eol-internal-enablement → eol-message — every one runs standalone, sized Light/Standard/Heavy by you

Career and leadership transitions

AI product work


Get Started

Choose your setup:

I use...Get thisNotes
Claude Desktop or Claude Webpm-skills-starter-pack.zipUnzip, then upload the individual skill ZIPs to Claude Skills
Claude CodePlugin marketplaceclaude /plugin marketplace add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills
Codexpm-skills-codex.zipInstalls .agents/skills and AGENTS.md
Not surepm-skills-starter-pack.zipStart here

All downloads: GitHub Releases

Themed packs for Claude Desktop / Web

Each pack below is a ZIP of upload-ready skill ZIPs — unzip, then upload individuals to Claude Skills:

PackDownloadWhat's inside
Starterpm-skills-starter-pack.zipCore skills across all categories
Discovery02-discovery-pack.zipResearch, interviewing, synthesis
Strategy03-strategy-pack.zipPositioning, roadmapping, prioritization
Delivery04-delivery-pack.zipPRDs, stories, epics
AI PM05-ai-pm-pack.zipContext engineering, orchestration, readiness
Market Intel06-market-intel-pack.zipThe full Market Intelligence Suite: disciplines, investigation chain, frameworks, monitors
Lifecycle & EOL07-lifecycle-eol-pack.zipAging products: extend, replace, or retire — plus the full sunset process
All skills99-all-skills-pack.zipAll 77 skills

Install guides


Try It First — Streamlit (beta)

Not ready to wire skills into your agent setup? Run the local playground first and kick the tires in your browser.

pip install -r app/requirements.txt
streamlit run app/main.py

What you can do:

  • Learn — browse setup and integration paths without leaving the app
  • Find My Skill — describe your situation in plain English and get recommended skills
  • Run Skills — run a skill with your own scenario once you know what you want

Multi-provider support: Anthropic, OpenAI, Ollama. API keys via environment variables only (no in-app key entry).

Docs: app/STREAMLIT_INTERFACE.md · app/.env.example

Feedback welcome via GitHub Issues or LinkedIn.


70 Skills, 3 Types

Skills are organized in three tiers that build on each other:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  WORKFLOW SKILLS (19)                                  │
│  Complete end-to-end PM processes (days to weeks)      │
│  Example: run a full discovery cycle or write a PRD    │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                       ↓ orchestrates
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  INTERACTIVE SKILLS (27)                               │
│  Guided discovery — 3-5 questions, then recommendations│
│  Example: "Which prioritization framework fits here?"  │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                       ↓ uses
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  COMPONENT SKILLS (24)                                 │
│  Templates for specific PM deliverables (30-90 min)    │
│  Example: write a user story with acceptance criteria  │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Interactive skills use an Adaptive Decision Ladder. Instead of dumping a framework at you, an interactive skill asks 3-5 targeted questions about your specific context, then offers numbered recommendations — each with a clear "use this when" rationale. You pick a path. The skill executes it and explains the why as it goes. If you want to just learn the framework without doing the work, you can ask that too — the skill coaches you either way. This is ABC — Always Be Coaching — in practice.

Full catalog: catalog/INDEX.md — all 77 skills with descriptions, or browse skills/ directly.


How a Skill File Works

Every SKILL.md follows the same structure:

SectionWhat it contains
Frontmattername, description, type, intent, best_for, scenarios
PurposeWhat this skill does and when to reach for it
InputWhat you can bring (with example invocations) — inline input is used, not re-asked, and arriving empty-handed is fine: the skill walks you through it
Key ConceptsFrameworks, definitions, anti-patterns — with vocabulary explained
ApplicationStep-by-step instructions an agent (or human) can follow
ExamplesReal-world cases showing both good and bad versions
Common PitfallsNamed failure modes with consequences and corrections
ReferencesRelated skills and external frameworks

The best_for frontmatter field lists 3-5 specific scenarios where the skill is most useful — helpful for quickly scanning whether a skill fits your situation.

Why no $ARGUMENTS templating? Other skill libraries use Claude Code's $ARGUMENTS substitution for input. We deliberately don't: it only expands in Claude Code (it renders as literal syntax in Claude Desktop/Web, Codex, and the Streamlit playground), and it teaches the human reader nothing. Instead, every skill has a plain-language ## Input section that works on every runtime — and makes clear you can show up with full context, partial context, or nothing at all and be guided through the rest. Full rationale in CONTRIBUTING.md.


Works With

Claude Code · Claude Desktop · Claude Web · OpenAI Codex · ChatGPT · Cursor · Windsurf · n8n · LangFlow · CrewAI · Gemini · any agent that reads structured markdown

See docs/Platform Guides for PMs.md for platform-specific setup.


Docs

DocumentPurpose
Using PM Skills 101Beginner-friendly orientation — setup without technical overload
Platform Guides for PMsTool-by-tool setup chooser for every supported platform
Using PM Skills with ClaudeClaude Code + GitHub ZIP upload for Claude Desktop/Web
Using PM Skills with CodexLocal workspace + GitHub-connected Codex on ChatGPT
Using PM Skills with ChatGPTGitHub app, Custom GPT Knowledge, and Project-based usage
Using PM Skills with Slash Commands 101Turn skills into reusable slash commands like /pm-story
Add-a-Skill Utility GuideEnd-to-end guide for generating and validating new skills
Market Intelligence Suite SummaryThe 14-skill competitive/market research suite: disciplines, chain, and which skill to run when
Lifecycle & EOL Suite SummaryThe 8-skill lifecycle/sunset suite: the three plays, the EOL chain, and right-sizing
Building PM SkillsHow raw PM content gets distilled into agent-ready skills
START_HERE.md60-second onboarding for local repo users

What's New

v0.84 — August 10, 2026 · The Lifecycle & End-of-Life Suite

  • 7 new skills + 1 upgrade for the part of product management nobody trains you on: what to do with a product that has stopped growing, and how to retire one without losing the customer
  • Start upstream of the kill decision. lifecycle-play-advisor and product-lifecycle-plays diagnose where a product actually sits using seven transition questions, then pick between the three plays — extend, replace, or retire. Includes the seven replacement hazards and a risk register whose contingency column asks the question everyone skips: what is Plan B?
  • The EOL chain: eol-readiness-advisor (go/no-go, and it will tell you to hold) → eol-stakeholder-sequence (Legal before Finance before Sales — get the order wrong and you find the landmines after the announcement) → eol-checklist (phase-gated, an owner on every item) → eol-internal-enablement (your teams ready before customers hear) → eol-message (upgraded: three transition paths including the honest no-replacement case) → eol-process (the whole thing, six phases, including the post-EOL review everybody skips)
  • Right-sizing is a dial you set, not a verdict handed to you. Every skill offers Light / Standard / Heavy, defaults to Standard, and names what a lighter choice leaves uncovered. A feature deprecation should never get a flagship playbook — that's how teams learn to ignore EOL process on the sunset that actually matters
  • No tight coupling. Every skill runs standalone; the workflow is a recommended route through independent stops, not a pipeline. Enter wherever you actually are — including mid-sunset, with a diagnostic that maps symptoms ("Support is drowning") to the phase that got skipped
  • Library now at 77 skills · full story in the release note

v0.83 — July 17, 2026 · The Market Intelligence Suite

v0.82 — July 8, 2026

  • Added incoming-request-advisor (Interactive) — drop in a Slack ping, email, mandate, or escalation and get a structured breakdown that separates the literal ask from the real job-to-be-done, reads sender power and stake, and points you toward a reply. Ships with a copy/paste template so you can run it by hand too
  • New: a browsable download shelf at /dist — no terminal, no Releases tab. Read the plain-language README, scan the CATALOG, and download any skill or pack straight from the repo. Built for PMs who just want the skills
  • Library now at 56 skills

v0.81 — July 4, 2026

  • Every skill now has a required ## Input section: what to bring, what happens to context you supply up front (it's used, not re-asked), and reassurance that arriving empty-handed is fine — the guided flow covers the rest
  • Added argument-hint autocomplete for Claude Code users; deliberately no $ARGUMENTS templating — it breaks on every other runtime and teaches the reader nothing (why)
  • Validator now enforces the convention: skills fail without an Input section or with bare $ARGUMENTS in the body
  • Streamlit playground shows each skill's "What to bring (all optional)" before you start a session
  • Restored agent-orchestration-advisor (Interactive) — the multi-agent workflow design skill was referenced everywhere but only existed on an orphaned commit; recovered from git history and brought up to current standards

v0.80 — June 19, 2026

  • Added stakeholder-identification (Component) — comprehensive stakeholder brainstorm using allies/audiences/influencers, R/P/D marking, equity lens, and bias check; narrows to priority targets
  • Added stakeholder-mapping (Component) — two complementary grids (Power × Interest + Impact × Power); comparing outputs reveals who you're under-engaging relative to how much the product affects them
  • Added stakeholder-engagement-advisor (Interactive) — per-stakeholder engagement planning via Adaptive Decision Ladder: three questions on profile, power/impact, and context deliver tailored message framing, medium, cadence, and a named next action

All three adapted from the MITRE Innovation Toolkit via the companion repo MITRE ITK Skills — worth a bookmark if you work in discovery, facilitation, or cross-functional product strategy.

v0.79 — May 15, 2026

  • Added organic-growth-advisor — McKinsey Growth Pyramid triage for new segments, geographies, channels, or products
  • Added pm-skill-creator — interactive skill for designing repo-compliant skills via guided conversation
  • Fixed missing .claude-plugin/plugin.json that silently blocked Claude Code skill discovery
  • Added configurable input length guard (PM_MAX_INPUT) and path traversal protection to helper scripts

→ Full changelog


Contributing

Found a gap? Have a PM framework worth formalizing? The bar is pedagogic — skills must teach the why, not just the how.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines, or open an issue to start a conversation.


License

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — non-commercial use with share-alike.

Everything in this repository — every skill, template, and doc — is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. There is no mix of licenses here.

Some skills note in their Provenance sections that they were adapted from product-manager-prompts, Dean's earlier prompt library. That repo has the same author, so there is no license conflict: a license grants permissions to other people, and a copyright holder is free to adapt and relicense their own work. Those Provenance lines are lineage — a breadcrumb back to where an idea started — not a license dependency. No third-party MIT-licensed text is incorporated anywhere in this library.

In plain terms:

  • ✅ Use these skills in your day job — at a for-profit company, with your team, in your agents. That's what they're for.
  • ✅ Adapt and remix them — share what you build under this same license, with credit.
  • ✅ Teach with them — workshops, brown bags, mentoring, sending the ladder down.
  • ❌ Don't sell them — no repackaging the skills themselves into a paid product, course, or service without expressed written permission.
  • 🤔 Not sure your use qualifies? Open an issue and ask. If you're using these in the spirit they were built — to get better at the craft and help others do the same — the answer is almost certainly yes.

The companion prompt library, product-manager-prompts, carries the same CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license as of its v2.3.0, with its own plain-language permissions (stricter on commercial use) — see its LICENSING.md, which governs that repo.


Questions

其他

高风险

  • 来源需自行核对维护者身份。
  • 未检测到明显脚本安装指令。
  • 可能需要外部 token、网络权限或第三方服务。
  • 存在潜在风险命令,请谨慎安装。
  • 扫描发现:2 条。

Codex — Git Clone 安装

  1. 安装前请先查看来源仓库和风险报告。
  2. 克隆仓库:git clone https://github.com/deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills.git
  3. 将 "skills/eol-process" 文件夹复制到 Codex 的 skills 目录中。
  4. 重启 Codex 让新的 skill 生效。

Codex — 手动复制安装

  1. 安装前请先查看来源仓库和风险报告。
  2. 从源仓库下载 SKILL.md 及相关文件。
  3. 在 Codex 的 skills 目录中创建新文件夹。
  4. 将所有 skill 文件复制到新文件夹中。
  5. 重启 Codex 让新的 skill 生效。

Claude Code — Git Clone 安装

  1. 安装前请先查看来源仓库和风险报告。
  2. 克隆仓库:git clone https://github.com/deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills.git
  3. 将 "skills/eol-process" 文件夹复制到 Claude Code 的 skills 目录中。
  4. 重启 Claude Code 让新的 skill 生效。

Claude Code — 手动复制安装

  1. 安装前请先查看来源仓库和风险报告。
  2. 从源仓库下载 SKILL.md 及相关文件。
  3. 在 Claude Code 的 skills 目录中创建新文件夹。
  4. 将所有 skill 文件复制到新文件夹中。
  5. 重启 Claude Code 让新的 skill 生效。

Cursor — Git Clone 安装

  1. 安装前请先查看来源仓库和风险报告。
  2. 克隆仓库:git clone https://github.com/deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills.git
  3. 将 "skills/eol-process" 文件夹复制到 Cursor 的 skills 目录中。
  4. 重启 Cursor 让新的 skill 生效。

Cursor — 手动复制安装

  1. 安装前请先查看来源仓库和风险报告。
  2. 从源仓库下载 SKILL.md 及相关文件。
  3. 在 Cursor 的 skills 目录中创建新文件夹。
  4. 将所有 skill 文件复制到新文件夹中。
  5. 重启 Cursor 让新的 skill 生效。

GitHub Copilot — Git Clone 安装

  1. 安装前请先查看来源仓库和风险报告。
  2. 克隆仓库:git clone https://github.com/deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills.git
  3. 将 "skills/eol-process" 文件夹复制到 GitHub Copilot 的 skills 目录中。
  4. 重启 GitHub Copilot 让新的 skill 生效。

GitHub Copilot — 手动复制安装

  1. 安装前请先查看来源仓库和风险报告。
  2. 从源仓库下载 SKILL.md 及相关文件。
  3. 在 GitHub Copilot 的 skills 目录中创建新文件夹。
  4. 将所有 skill 文件复制到新文件夹中。
  5. 重启 GitHub Copilot 让新的 skill 生效。

Windsurf — Git Clone 安装

  1. 安装前请先查看来源仓库和风险报告。
  2. 克隆仓库:git clone https://github.com/deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills.git
  3. 将 "skills/eol-process" 文件夹复制到 Windsurf 的 skills 目录中。
  4. 重启 Windsurf 让新的 skill 生效。

Windsurf — 手动复制安装

  1. 安装前请先查看来源仓库和风险报告。
  2. 从源仓库下载 SKILL.md 及相关文件。
  3. 在 Windsurf 的 skills 目录中创建新文件夹。
  4. 将所有 skill 文件复制到新文件夹中。
  5. 重启 Windsurf 让新的 skill 生效。
查看 SKILL.md 原文
name: eol-process
argument-hint: "[product being retired, and where you are in the process]"
description: "Run a product sunset end to end — decide, align, plan, prepare, announce, close. Use when you need the whole EOL process, not just one artifact."
intent: >-
  Orchestrate a complete product end-of-life from the go/no-go decision through post-retirement
  review, sequencing the decision, stakeholder alignment, operational plan, internal enablement,
  customer announcement, and closure. Right-sized so a feature deprecation runs in a week and a
  regulated hardware retirement runs across quarters. Use this to lose the product without losing
  the customer.
type: workflow
theme: eol-transition
best_for:
  - "Running a full product sunset from decision through post-EOL review"
  - "Knowing what has to happen before you can announce — and in what order"
  - "Rescuing a sunset already in motion by finding which phase got skipped"
scenarios:
  - "We've decided to retire a product and I own the whole thing — walk me through it end to end"
  - "We announced an EOL and it's going badly; what did we skip and what do we do now?"
estimated_time: "30-60 min to plan; weeks to quarters to execute"

EOL Process

Purpose

Run a product retirement end to end: decide whether to do it, align the people who can stop it, build the operational plan, ready the teams who will face customers, announce it, and close it out properly. Six phases with decision points between them.

The governing goal, and the sentence worth keeping in your head the whole way through: lose the product without losing the customer. Most of what follows exists to protect the second half of that sentence.

This is an orchestration skill. It doesn't replace the artifact skills — it tells you which one to reach for, when, and what has to be true before you move on.

Input

Works best with: The product being retired and where you currently are — considering it, decided, mid-plan, or already announced and struggling.

Also useful: Scale (customers, revenue, contracts), whether a replacement exists, and who already knows.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The process opens by establishing what's being retired and where you are in it, then routes you to the right phase. If you're mid-sunset and something is going wrong, say so — the diagnostic in "Entering Mid-Stream" finds the skipped phase.

Example invocations:

  • Run the full EOL process for our legacy reporting module — decision made, nothing else started.
  • We announced a sunset three weeks ago and Support is drowning. What did we skip?

Key Concepts

The Six Phases

#PhaseQuestion it answersPrimary artifact
1DecideShould we retire this, and how big is this?Readiness assessment + intensity level
2AlignWho can stop this, and what do they know that we don't?Stakeholder sequence
3PlanWhat has to happen, when, and who owns it?Phase-gated checklist
4PrepareAre our people ready before our customers hear?Internal enablement pack
5AnnounceWhat do customers hear, and when?Customer EOL message
6CloseDid we finish, and what did we learn?Post-EOL review

Phase 6 is the one everyone skips. It's also the phase that makes your next sunset cheaper. Budget for it up front, because nobody volunteers for it afterward.

This Is a Route, Not a Pipeline

Every skill in this suite stands alone. None requires another to have run first. This process is a recommended route through independent stops, not a conveyor belt — which means:

  • You can enter at any phase. Decision already made and defensible? Start at Phase 2.
  • You can skip phases when the level justifies it. A Level 1 sunset often collapses 2 through 4 into a single afternoon.
  • You can go backwards, and sometimes must. Phase 2 routinely sends you back to Phase 1 — a Legal finding or a Sales commitment can invalidate the decision. That's the process working, not failing.
  • Nothing hands off a format. Carrying context between phases means telling the next skill "Level 2" and pasting what you have. There's no schema to preserve.

The order earns its keep because each phase surfaces what the next one needs. Deviate deliberately, not accidentally.

Right-Size the Whole Process

Not all EOLs play out the same. The process compresses or expands with the sunset:

Level 1 — LightLevel 2 — StandardLevel 3 — Heavy
Typical scopeFeature, internal tool, APICommercial product, active customersRevenue-critical, hardware, regulated
Elapsed timeDays to weeks6-12 months12-24 months
Phase 2 stops3-47-810+
Phase 3 gates2-3 phases, no gate criteria4-5 phases with gatesAll 6 phases, gates with approvers
Phase 4 outputSupport FAQ+ Sales points, objections, escalation+ Channel brief, training
Phase 5 messageBrief noticeStandard with phase tableFull, phased, with compliance
Phases 2-4Often collapse into one sittingDistinct, sequentialDistinct, with their own workstreams

Level 2 is the default. Set the level in Phase 1, and let it size everything downstream. Never default to Level 3 — process theater on a small sunset teaches everyone to ignore the process on a big one.

Entering Mid-Stream

Most people find this skill in the middle of a sunset, often a troubled one. Symptoms map to the phase that got skipped:

SymptomPhase skippedWhat to do now
"Legal just found a contract problem"2 (Align)Stop. Return to Phase 1 — the decision may not survive
"Sales says they promised this forever"2 (Align)Inventory field commitments before any further comms
"Support is drowning in tickets"4 (Prepare)Ship the FAQ and escalation ladder today; backfill the rest
"Customers say they never heard"5 (Announce)Re-announce with dates; the first notice didn't land
"Nobody knows who owns what"3 (Plan)Build the checklist; unowned items are the failure
"We shut it off and things broke"3 (Plan)Downstream readers were never inventoried
"We did it and learned nothing"6 (Close)Run the review now — memory decays fast

Facilitation Source of Truth

Use workshop-facilitation as the interaction protocol when running any phase conversationally. Give the heads-up, take context dumps, offer numbered choices, and let people bail to a specific phase.

Anti-Patterns (what this is NOT)

  • Not a project plan. It sequences decisions and artifacts, not tasks and resources.
  • Not mandatory in full. Six phases at Level 1 is the ceremony failure this suite exists to prevent.
  • Not a substitute for the conversations. Phase 2 is people talking, not a document.
  • Not one-directional. Going back to Phase 1 is a success condition, not a rollback.

Application

Use template.md as the one-page tracker for a sunset in flight.

This workflow orchestrates 6 phases with a decision point after each. Elapsed time runs from days at Level 1 to two years at Level 3 — set the level in Phase 1 and let it size the rest. Each phase names the skill that produces its artifact, but every one of those skills also runs standalone, so enter wherever you actually are.


Phase 1: Decide

Question: Should we retire this, and how big is this?

Activities

  1. Name the trigger honestly — a metric, a strategy shift, a cost complaint, or an exec remark. The trigger predicts the failure mode.
  2. Assess retire signals against hold signals. Two or more strong retire signals is a real case; an obligation lock or a missing landing place can outweigh all of them.
  3. Set the intensity level. Recommend from blast radius, then choose deliberately. This sizes every phase that follows.
  4. Confirm the landing place: replacement, migration, or graceful exit — and whether it's ready.

Run eol-readiness-advisor for this phase.

Outputs

  • A verdict: Go, Go-with-conditions, Hold, or Harvest
  • An intensity level (1, 2, or 3)
  • A named landing place with a readiness status
  • A list of obligations to check before announcing

Decision Point 1: Is this a Go, and is the landing place real?

  • Go → proceed to Phase 2
  • Go-with-conditions → proceed to Phase 2, carrying the condition as a gate on Phase 5
  • Hold → stop. Set a revisit trigger. Consider whether a cheaper move (End of Sale only, a price change, a bug fix) satisfies the actual need
  • Harvest → stop the investment, not the product. Set a review date

If the landing place isn't ready, you may proceed through Phases 2-4 but not Phase 5. Do not announce a transition you can't yet support.


Phase 2: Align

Question: Who can stop this, and what do they know that we don't?

Activities

  1. Order the stops: Legal, Finance, Sales, Marketing, CS, difficult customers, Engineering, Support — filtered by level, plus Executives, Channel, and Regulatory at Level 3.
  2. For each stop, prepare what you need from them and what you owe to them.
  3. Hold the conversations in order. Each one informs the next.
  4. Capture what surfaced — especially field commitments, contract terms, and hidden dependencies.

Run eol-stakeholder-sequence for this phase.

Outputs

  • A completed sequence with an output per stop
  • An inventory of commitments, obligations, and dependencies discovered
  • A revised impact list from your most difficult customers

Decision Point 2: Did anything invalidate the decision?

This is the most important gate in the process, and the one teams treat as a formality.

  • Nothing blocking → proceed to Phase 3
  • A contract, regulation, or commitment blocks the timeline → return to Phase 1. Reassess with the new evidence. The date moves, the scope changes, or the verdict flips
  • The landing place turns out to be weaker than believed → return to Phase 1. This is the single most common finding, and it usually arrives from the difficult-customer stop

Returning to Phase 1 here is cheap. Discovering the same thing after Phase 5 is not.


Phase 3: Plan

Question: What has to happen, when, and who owns it?

Activities

  1. Select the lifecycle gates in scope — and name the ones you're deliberately not using.
  2. Build items per phase, per functional area, at the level you set. Every item: a verb, 4-8 words, a named owning function.
  3. Write gate criteria with approvers for each phase transition (Level 2+).
  4. Cover the four things sunsets strand: data, contracts, access, money.
  5. Put the Phase 4 "enablement complete" date on the plan, before the Phase 5 announcement date.

Run eol-checklist for this phase.

Outputs

  • A phase-gated checklist with owners and dates
  • Gate criteria with named approvers
  • Post-EOL actions, including the Phase 6 review, owned
  • Assumptions to validate

Decision Point 3: Is every item owned, and is every date real?

  • Unowned items → that's the finding. Escalate rather than papering over it
  • A date you can't defend → write TBD, or Not scheduled with the precondition. An invented EOL date is a promise you will break in public
  • Enablement date not before announcement date → fix it now; in practice they collapse

Phase 4: Prepare

Question: Are our people ready before our customers hear?

Activities

  1. Build the support FAQ, organized by what customers actually ask, highest call volume first.
  2. Build sales talking points with an honest comparison table — including the gaps.
  3. Write objection handling using Acknowledge-Reframe-Offer, with every offer pre-approved.
  4. Name the escalation ladder — four rungs, real people.
  5. At Level 3, add the channel partner brief and run live training with role-play.

Run eol-internal-enablement for this phase.

Outputs

  • An enablement pack sized to the level
  • An escalation ladder a rep could use at 4pm on a Friday
  • Partners briefed ahead of the public notice (Level 3)

Decision Point 4: Is enablement actually complete?

This gates the announcement. The cardinal sin of EOL communication is handing Support and Sales the announcement five minutes before customers get it.

Test it: ask a rep who they'd call about a churn threat, and ask them to answer the hardest objection out loud. If either answer is a shrug, you are not ready to announce.


Phase 5: Announce

Question: What do customers hear, and when?

Activities

  1. Size the message: Brief, Standard, or Full.
  2. Choose the path: replacement, migration, or graceful exit — each produces a different message.
  3. Draft against the nine-section framework, acknowledging impact before pitching benefits.
  4. State the gates in customer consequences, not internal acronyms.
  5. Apply the sticky-note test: after one read, can a customer write down what to do and by when?
  6. Segment where it matters — enterprise, SMB, at-risk accounts, and partners need different things.

Run eol-message for this phase.

Outputs

  • The customer announcement, sized and pathed
  • Segment variants where warranted
  • A comms calendar across the gates, not a single send

Decision Point 5: Does the announcement survive contact?

Before sending, check three things:

  • Legal has read it — especially anything about contracts, refunds, or certification
  • It doesn't contradict what customers were sold — check against the field commitments from Phase 2
  • Support has it first — with enough lead time to have read it

Phase 6: Close

Question: Did we finish, and what did we learn?

Activities

  1. Walk the gates as they arrive. Each transition needs its criteria met and its approver's sign-off — gates are commitments, not calendar entries.
  2. Track migration or transition progress against the Phase 3 targets. Escalate accounts with zero movement early, not at the last gate.
  3. Complete the closure items: data export windows honored, deletion scheduled, contracts closed, revenue recognition ended, infrastructure decommissioned, documentation archived.
  4. Run the lessons-learned review. What surprised you, which phase you under-invested in, what the difficult customers found that you'd missed, and what the retention actually was against forecast.
  5. Where an EOL date was left unscheduled, hand off the precondition to a named owner with a review date.

Outputs

  • Gates closed with sign-offs
  • Final retention or transition numbers against forecast
  • A written lessons-learned review
  • Any deferred decisions explicitly owned

Decision Point 6: Is this actually closed?

Closure is not the shutdown date. It's when the data is gone or delivered, the contracts are settled, the money is recognized, and someone has written down what happened. If the review hasn't been run, the sunset isn't finished — it's just quiet.


Complete Workflow: End-to-End Summary

PHASE 1: DECIDE                          -> eol-readiness-advisor
  Trigger -> signals -> intensity level -> landing place
  DP1: Go / Go-with-conditions / Hold / Harvest
       Landing place not ready? Phases 2-4 OK, Phase 5 blocked
       |
PHASE 2: ALIGN                           -> eol-stakeholder-sequence
  Legal -> Finance -> Sales -> Marketing -> CS -> difficult customers
  -> Engineering -> Support  (+ Execs, Channel, Regulatory at L3)
  DP2: Did anything invalidate the decision?  --[yes]--> back to Phase 1
       |
PHASE 3: PLAN                            -> eol-checklist
  Gates in scope -> items with owners -> gate criteria -> data,
  contracts, access, money -> enablement date BEFORE announce date
  DP3: Every item owned? Every date real?
       |
PHASE 4: PREPARE                         -> eol-internal-enablement
  Support FAQ -> sales points with gaps -> objections (offers
  pre-approved) -> escalation ladder -> channel brief + training (L3)
  DP4: Enablement complete?  --[no]--> DO NOT ANNOUNCE
       |
PHASE 5: ANNOUNCE                        -> eol-message
  Size -> path -> draft -> sticky-note test -> segment -> comms calendar
  DP5: Legal read it? Consistent with field promises? Support has it?
       |
PHASE 6: CLOSE                           -> (this skill)
  Walk gates -> track progress -> close data/contracts/money ->
  LESSONS-LEARNED REVIEW -> own any deferred decisions
  DP6: Data settled, contracts closed, review written?

Level 1 compression: Phases 2, 3, and 4 often collapse into one sitting — a short stakeholder list, a punch list, and a support FAQ. Phases 1, 5, and 6 still happen. Especially 6.


Examples

  • examples/sample.md — Fieldlight Classic Dispatch (SaaS, Level 2, all six phases across ten months)
  • examples/sample-industrial.md — NFA-200 controller line (industrial, Level 3, where Phase 2 sends the process back to Phase 1 and changes the outcome)

Common Pitfalls

Pitfall 1: Starting at Phase 5

Symptom: The first artifact anyone builds is the customer announcement.

Consequence: You announce, then discover the contract terms, the field promises, and the missing migration path — in public, with a date already committed.

Fix: The announcement is the fifth phase for a reason. Everything before it exists to make it survivable.


Pitfall 2: Treating Decision Point 2 as a Formality

Symptom: Stakeholder conversations happen, findings get noted, the plan proceeds unchanged.

Consequence: You held the conversations and ignored them, which is worse than skipping them — you now have witnesses who warned you.

Fix: DP2 is a real gate. If Legal or your difficult customers surfaced something material, return to Phase 1 and reassess. That loop is the process working.


Pitfall 3: Announcing Before Enablement

Symptom: Phase 4 and Phase 5 land in the same week, or Phase 4 slips and Phase 5 doesn't.

Consequence: Support improvises for three days and their improvisations become your de facto policy — inconsistently.

Fix: DP4 gates DP5 on the plan, with separate dates. If enablement slips, the announcement slips.


Pitfall 4: Process Theater on a Small Sunset

Symptom: A deprecated feature gets ten stakeholder stops and a training program.

Consequence: Everyone learns EOL process is bureaucracy and skips it next time — and next time is the one with the contracts.

Fix: Set the level in Phase 1 honestly. A Level 1 sunset that runs in an afternoon and closes properly is a success.


Pitfall 5: Skipping Phase 6

Symptom: The product shuts off, the team moves on, nobody writes anything down.

Consequence: The next sunset repeats every mistake, and the data-deletion and contract-closure items quietly go undone.

Fix: Put the review on the Phase 3 checklist with a named owner while people still care. Closure is not the shutdown date.


Pitfall 6: Losing the Customer With the Product

Symptom: Every phase is executed competently, measured entirely in internal completion.

Consequence: A clean retirement and a churn spike. You ran a good process and still lost the relationship.

Fix: Track retention as the outcome measure, not checklist completion. The goal is losing the product without losing the customer — if the second half didn't happen, the process didn't succeed.


References

Related Skills

Every skill below stands alone. This process recommends a route through them; none of them requires this skill, and this skill doesn't require you to run all of them. Carry context between phases by saying "Level 2" and pasting what you have.

External Frameworks

  • Product Life Cycle (PLC) — EOL lives in the decline stage
  • Industry EOL lifecycle practice (GA/NSC/EOS/EOE/EOR/EOM/EOL/EOSRV)
  • Acknowledge-Reframe-Offer — objection handling in Phase 4

Provenance

  • Orchestrates the EOL prompt series in the https://github.com/deanpeters/product-manager-prompts repo.

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