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lifecycle-play-advisor

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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:1 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/lifecycle-play-advisor" 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/lifecycle-play-advisor" 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/lifecycle-play-advisor" 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/lifecycle-play-advisor" 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/lifecycle-play-advisor" 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: lifecycle-play-advisor
argument-hint: "[product that's fading, and what makes you think so]"
description: "Diagnose where a product sits in its lifecycle and which play fits — extend, replace, or retire. Use when a product is fading and you need the call, not just the worry."
intent: >-
  Guided triage for a product at the mature-to-decline inflection. Establishes the lifecycle stage
  from the transition questions, identifies what is actually driving the pressure, tests the
  extension play before conceding to replacement or retirement, and routes to the skill that
  executes the chosen play.
type: interactive
theme: product-lifecycle
best_for:
  - "Settling an extend-versus-replace-versus-retire argument with a diagnosis instead of volume"
  - "Checking whether a product is really in decline or just badly distributed"
  - "Finding the cheapest play that actually addresses the pressure"
scenarios:
  - "Revenue's been flat for a year and half the team wants a rewrite and half wants to kill it"
  - "Leadership says this product is dying — is it, and what should we actually do about it?"
estimated_time: "15-25 min"

Lifecycle Play Advisor

Purpose

Work out what to do with a product that has stopped growing. Three plays are available — extend, replace, retire — and this skill gets you to the right one through diagnosis rather than debate, then hands you to whichever skill executes it.

Most teams argue the play before establishing the stage. The argument is unwinnable that way, because nobody has agreed on what's actually happening to the product. Four questions fixes that.

This skill is deliberately willing to say "nothing yet." A mature product throwing off margin with manageable support cost doesn't need a play; it needs to be left alone and watched.

Input

Works best with: The product, and what makes you think something needs to change.

Also useful: Revenue trend and over how long, support load, what customers say, whether an internal driver (cost, capacity, strategy) is really behind the question, and what investment appetite exists.

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 diagnosis runs on questions a PM can answer from what they already know — no report-pulling required. "I don't know" is a valid answer and becomes a labeled assumption in the recommendation.

Example invocations:

  • Our reporting module has been flat six quarters and people want to rebuild it. Extend, replace, or retire?
  • Leadership wants to kill our parts module. Walk me through whether that's right.

Key Concepts

The Three Plays

  • Extend — add a variant or capability to the existing line. The product keeps running; you add alongside. Cheapest, lowest risk, most often skipped because it isn't exciting.
  • Replace — ship a successor and phase the old one out. GTM and EOL run simultaneously, for two products that compete with each other. The expensive play.
  • Retire — phase out with no successor of your own. Customers land elsewhere, possibly with a competitor. The goal becomes losing the product without losing the customer.

And the fourth answer that isn't a play: harvest — stop investing, keep running, set a review date.

Diagnosis Before Play

The seven transition questions establish stage; the pressure source discriminates the plays. Run both before recommending anything, and show your work — a recommendation the user can audit is one they can defend to someone else.

The Extension Bias

Default toward the cheapest play that addresses the actual pressure. Extension is under-considered in almost every room, because replacement is more interesting to build and retirement is more decisive to announce. Test extension explicitly, and record why it failed when it does.

Anti-Patterns (what this is NOT)

  • Not a growth strategy tool. Where the next tranche of growth comes from is a different question — see ansoff-matrix and organic-growth-advisor.
  • Not a kill switch. "Nothing yet" and "harvest" are real outcomes.
  • Not the execution. It routes to the skill that runs the chosen play.

Facilitation Source of Truth

Use workshop-facilitation as the interaction protocol. Give the heads-up at the start — four questions, about fifteen minutes — and let the user dump context to skip ahead.


Application

This skill asks up to 4 adaptive questions, then recommends a play with its reasoning, its hazards, and a route out.


Question 1 of 4 — What product, and what makes you think something's wrong?

Agent asks:

"Which product are we looking at, and what prompted the question? The prompt matters as much as the product — flat revenue, rising support costs, a competitor move, and an exec remark lead to very different diagnoses."

Listen for whether the trigger is internal or external. An internal trigger — manufacturing wants the line, engineering wants to rewrite, finance wants the cost out — is legitimate, but it means the customer-facing case for change is weak and the transition has to be carried entirely by you. Name that early; it changes what the play costs.


Question 2 of 4 — Where is it actually in the lifecycle?

Agent asks:

"Let's establish the stage. Seven quick reads — yes or no, gut answers are fine:

  1. Is defending market share still profitable?
  2. Are loyalty efforts no longer retaining users?
  3. Are legacy support costs becoming unsustainable?
  4. Should we be running migration campaigns instead of loyalty ones?
  5. Are we losing money on certain distribution channels?
  6. Are our value-add bundles losing effectiveness?
  7. Is our data shifting from predictive to transitional?"

Score it:

Yes countStageImplication
0-1Mature and healthyNo play needed. Invest or leave alone
2-3Mature and softeningExtension territory; watch quarterly
4-5Crossing into declinePick a play deliberately, now
6-7In declineReplace or retire; extension likely just delays

Say the count back and name the pattern, not just the number. Yeses clustered on 5 and 6 (channel and price) point somewhere very different from yeses on 3 and 7 (support cost and data) — the first pattern is a distribution problem wearing a product costume.


Question 3 of 4 — What's actually driving the pressure?

Agent asks:

"Three sources. Which is loudest?

  1. Demand-side — customer needs shifted, segments moved, a competitor differentiated
  2. Supply/cost-side — components, production cost, support load, or a strategy change
  3. Capability-side — the technology is obsolete or the architecture has hit its limit

Pick one as primary, even if two apply."

Why this discriminates:

PressurePoints towardBecause
Demand-sideExtendThe core still solves a real problem for someone — find them
Supply/cost-sideReplaceThe problem is your economics, not the customer's need
Capability-sideReplace or RetireDepends on whether the need survives the technology

Name the trap out loud: supply-side pressure arrives at the roadmap disguised as a customer problem. "We need to rebuild this" often means "our costs are bad." That's a legitimate reason for a replacement — but saying it plainly changes what success looks like and who has to carry the transition.


Question 4 of 4 — Test the extension play

Agent asks:

"Before I recommend anything more expensive, four questions on extending what you have:

  1. Is there a segment a variant could serve?
  2. Is there a capability you could add without re-architecting?
  3. Would a repackage or rebrand reach a different buyer?
  4. Is the decline in the product, or in the channel or price around it?"

Question 4 catches the most expensive misdiagnosis in the set: a healthy product condemned because the distribution channel stopped working or the bundle lost its edge. Fixing the lever is far cheaper than replacing the product — and the broken lever carries straight over to the successor if you don't.

If all four are no, extension is genuinely off the table, and now the user has the "no, because…" on record for when someone asks in three months.


Final Step: Recommend the play

Deliver this structure:

## Lifecycle Play Recommendation: [Product]

**Stage:** [stage] — [n]/7 transition questions, clustered on [which]
**Primary pressure:** [demand / supply-cost / capability] — [evidence]
**Trigger was:** [internal / external] — [what that means for the transition]

### Recommended Play: [Extend / Replace / Retire / Harvest / Nothing yet]

**Because:** [two or three specifics from their answers]

**Extension test:** [passed and how, or failed and why — always state it]

**What this play costs:** [rough shape]

**What you're accepting by choosing it:** [the tradeoff, plainly]

### Hazards to plan for
- [The 2-3 hazards that apply to this play, from the seven]

### Assumptions I made
- [Anything answered "I don't know"]

Then offer numbered next steps:

"Where next?

  1. Run the retirement properly — eol-readiness-advisor for the go/no-go, or eol-process for the whole thing
  2. Build the replacement risk register — see product-lifecycle-plays, especially the seven hazards
  3. Plan the extension — organic-growth-advisor for which growth path the variant serves
  4. Run this across the whole line — the portfolio worksheet in product-lifecycle-plays

Pick a number, combine them, or tell me what you'd rather do."

On a Replace recommendation, always add one line: "A replacement is two funded workstreams — a launch and a retirement. If the retirement isn't funded, you've chosen an extension with extra steps."


Examples

Example A — SaaS, the answer is "your channel is broken, not your product"

PM: "Our Parts module has been flat for five quarters. Leadership wants to fold it into the core platform and stop selling it separately."

Agent (Q1): "What prompted it — a customer signal, or an internal one?"

PM: "Internal. It's the smallest line item and someone noticed."

Agent: "Noted — that's an internal trigger, which means there's no customer pressure to help carry a transition. Let's see whether the product agrees with leadership."

Agent (Q2): runs the seven questions. Yeses on 5 (losing money on certain channels) and 6 (bundles losing effectiveness). Everything else no.

Agent: "2 out of 7 — mature and softening, not declining. And the pattern is the interesting part: both of your yeses are on channel and price. Nothing about the product itself came back negative. Support cost is fine, retention is fine."

Agent (Q3): "What's driving the pressure?"

PM: "Honestly? We sell it through the same motion as everything else and it doesn't fit. Reps don't lead with it."

Agent (Q4): extension test. Segment — yes, distributors have asked for a read-only tier. Capability — yes, a read-only view is minor work. Repackage — yes, that's exactly the ask. Channel or product — channel.

Recommendation: Extend, and fix the channel. Stage says mature-softening. Both decline signals sit on distribution and pricing, not the product. A read-only distributor tier addresses a segment that has actively asked, and it's small work. Folding it into the core would have retired a healthy product to solve a sales-motion problem — and the sales-motion problem would have survived the merge.

What you're accepting: a distributor tier means supporting a new buyer type. Small, but not zero.


Example B — Industrial, the answer is "replace, and fund the retirement"

PM: "Manufacturing wants the NFA-200 line for NFA-500 capacity. So we're retiring the NFA-200."

Agent (Q1): "That's an internal trigger — a capacity constraint, not a customer need. Worth flagging up front: the customer-facing case for change is weak here, so your organization carries the entire transition. What's the revenue trend?"

PM: "Flat four quarters. Service revenue's actually growing."

Agent (Q2): runs the seven. Yeses on 4, 6, 7, and a soft 1. Support costs fine, retention strong, channels profitable.

Agent: "4 out of 7 — mature and softening, not in decline. Your installed base is loyal, under contract, and service margin is healthy. That matters, because it means this isn't a product failing. It's a factory floor you want back."

Agent (Q3): "Primary pressure?"

PM: "Supply side. Manufacturing capacity."

Agent (Q4): extension test. Segment — partially; a modular I/O variant would open bigger jobs. Capability without re-architecture — no, needs a new backplane. Repackage — no, industrial buyers specify on capability. Channel or product — neither.

Agent: "Here's the thing worth saying out loud: the extension your customers would want is the NFA-500. That's a strong signal the replacement play is right — and it raises the question you need to answer before committing. Is the NFA-500 a drop-in for the installed base?"

PM: "...I'd assumed so. I don't actually know."

Recommendation: Replace — with that question as a gate.

Hazards to plan for: internal misalignment (medium), cannibalization (deliberate, low impact), and poor EOL management (high impact) — which is entirely gated on the drop-in question. If the NFA-500 needs different mounting or site work, you don't have a migration path, you have a project, and an EOL date would be a promise you can't keep.

Assumption labeled: drop-in compatibility unverified.

And the line that always goes on a Replace: a replacement is two funded workstreams — a launch and a retirement. Retrofit engineering unfunded means you've chosen an extension with extra steps.


Common Pitfalls

Pitfall 1: Recommending a Play Before the Stage Is Established

Symptom: The user names a play in their first message and the conversation optimizes it.

Consequence: You've validated an opinion rather than run a diagnosis, and the expensive assumption inside it goes unexamined.

Fix: Run Q2 even when the user arrives certain. It takes two minutes and it either confirms them or saves them a year.


Pitfall 2: Letting the Count Replace the Pattern

Symptom: "4 out of 7, so you're in decline."

Consequence: Four yeses clustered on channel and price mean something completely different from four on support cost and architecture. The count alone routes people wrong.

Fix: Always name which questions came back yes, and say what that cluster means.


Pitfall 3: Accepting the Internal Trigger at Face Value

Symptom: "Manufacturing wants the line" becomes "the product should be retired."

Consequence: You run a full retirement when an End of Sale, a price change, or a repackage would have satisfied the actual need more cheaply.

Fix: Name the trigger as internal, then ask what specifically it needs. Often the cheaper move delivers it.


Pitfall 4: Skipping the Extension Test on an Obvious Case

Symptom: The product is clearly dying, so Q4 gets waved through.

Consequence: No written record of why extension failed. In three months someone asks, and the answer is a shrug.

Fix: Ask all four regardless. On a genuinely dead product it takes ninety seconds and produces a defensible "no, because…"


Pitfall 5: Treating "Nothing Yet" as a Non-Answer

Symptom: Every run produces a play, because producing a play feels like producing value.

Consequence: Healthy mature products get projects they didn't need, funded from budget that had somewhere better to be.

Fix: 0-1 yeses means no play. Say so, set a review date, and stop.


References

Related Skills

These stand on their own — none is a prerequisite for this skill, and this skill isn't a prerequisite for them.

External Frameworks

  • Product Life Cycle (PLC) — the five-stage economic model
  • PLC strategy grid — marketing-mix levers by stage

Provenance

  • Distilled from practitioner experience running product lifecycle transitions and product retirements across software, hardware, and regulated industries.

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