Discover the four critical phases of product lifecycle management and learn how to navigate each stage successfully.
In this comprehensive guide, we break down:
- MVP: Building your initial product and finding market fit
- Growth: Scaling teams and features effectively
- Maturity: Optimizing operations and maintaining market position
- Sunset: Managing decline and transitioning strategies
For each category, we explore:
- Team composition and changes
- Evolution of Product strategies
- What gets handled (and what does not)
- Strategic decisions made during transitions
Join Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel for a podcast sure to be perfect for product managers, agile coaches, and tech leaders looking to understand how team dynamics and product strategies evolve throughout a product's lifecycle.
#ProductManagement #AgileMethodology #ProductLifecycle #ProductStrategy #ProductDevelopment #MVP #ProductGrowth #TechLeadership #ProductMaturity #ProductSunset
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00:00:01 --> 00:00:10 welcome to the Arguing Agile Podcast, where Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel and Product Manager Brian Orlando argue about product management, leadership, and business agility, so you don't have to.
00:00:11 --> 00:00:13 welcome back to arguing agile today.
00:00:13 --> 00:00:19 We are talking about the product life cycle or product development life cycle or product maturity life cycle.
00:00:19 --> 00:00:20 The whole thing product life cycle.
00:00:20 --> 00:00:23 So There's a lot of models for the product life cycle that are floating around out there.
00:00:24 --> 00:00:26 we've settled for this podcast on a product model.
00:00:26 --> 00:00:27 I put it on the screen.
00:00:27 --> 00:00:28 It's in the middle of us now.
00:00:28 --> 00:00:31 There are four phases that we're using to kind of bound this podcast.
00:00:32 --> 00:00:37 One on the screen, it's called Introduction, but what we called it was Market Development, or like MVP.
00:00:37 --> 00:00:54 this is your pre crossing the chasm phase And then the other ones are really the main phases of your product life cycle growth maturity And sunset or some might say decline the image that we are using here Which you randomly pulled off the internet says decline, but we like to call it sunset.
00:00:54 --> 00:01:04 This is one of the most common models out there to describe the product life cycle You may have some that just limited to two or three columns But yeah, this is a very general Broadly used one.
00:01:04 --> 00:01:06 So this is the one we're going to use for this podcast.
00:01:06 --> 00:01:16 And I wanted to talk about two things in this podcast to kind of help people think about the product life cycle which is the team development that's happening in that life cycle of the product.
00:01:16 --> 00:01:25 And then what activities in product management are happening during that cycle So let's start in the MVP phase Boy, this is going to be confusing for me.
00:01:25 --> 00:01:26 Let's start with MVP.
00:01:26 --> 00:01:27 Like I think of MVP.
00:01:28 --> 00:01:32 Not as you're building a lot of large scale features or you're rapidly expanding teams or whatever.
00:01:32 --> 00:01:39 I think of like a skeleton crew that is knocking out some stuff very quickly and sending it to market to test.
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 If a signal is there, like go see our episode on MVP.
00:01:42 --> 00:01:44 Right, that we did a long, long time ago.
00:01:44 --> 00:02:08 Go see our MVP episode where we kind of argued back and forth, the true arguing Agile episode, where we argued back and forth about what MVP was because I said like, well, just whip up a cartoon illustration of your flow lifecycle of Dropbox and send it to your investors and if they give you cash, Congratulations, you're done with your MVP phase, you can move on to your next, whatever, your growth phase, right?
00:02:08 --> 00:02:09 Because you got money.
00:02:09 --> 00:02:10 Yeah, exactly.
00:02:10 --> 00:02:19 I think the primary purpose of MVP phase is really to figure out, like you said, figure out if there's a signal, learn what you don't know, and pivot, right?
00:02:19 --> 00:02:23 Before you can get into proper development of a product.
00:02:23 --> 00:02:32 So as long as it's doing the things that people are looking for, set their expectations accordingly, they're not going to get all the features or bells and whistles, so to speak.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:33 Right.
00:02:33 --> 00:02:45 And also they're not going to get, like you said, fully integrated products with other things on the periphery that eventually there'll be integrated with, but for now they could just return, you know Stub messages or something like that.
00:02:45 --> 00:02:45 Yeah.
00:02:45 --> 00:03:11 So very important phase and I feel like I've come across Programs where people rush through this a bit you know somebody assumes that people will love it or there's going to be enough purchase For this product so that you know, we'll proceed with that and they don't quite validate their assumptions and get signals i've seen that I think more often than the other way around where it's Thorough and it is properly done.
00:03:11 --> 00:03:12 Let's put it that way.
00:03:12 --> 00:03:20 Our MVP episode, what is minimum viable product was arguing the agile one 41 wow, clocked in at 40 minutes and 13 seconds.
00:03:20 --> 00:03:20 Yeah.
00:03:20 --> 00:03:23 here we're going to talk about the stages though, right?
00:03:23 --> 00:03:29 So the first stage we're in right now, we're talking about the really getting off the ground stage, right?
00:03:29 --> 00:03:32 And here it says MVP market development.
00:03:32 --> 00:03:34 So that could be confusing for some people.
00:03:35 --> 00:03:36 You're validating the market.
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 Is there a market for your product, right?
00:03:39 --> 00:03:42 If it's a brand new product that doesn't exist out there.
00:03:42 --> 00:03:43 No competitor has it.
00:03:43 --> 00:03:44 You're also developing a market.
00:03:45 --> 00:03:50 And that this is doing it the hard way is building the market while building the software at the same time.
00:03:50 --> 00:03:51 It's much easier to just do it.
00:03:51 --> 00:03:55 Google's way where you just look at a developed market and then you just steal everything, right?
00:03:55 --> 00:04:03 and remember we learned on the podcast where we watched the video from Eric Schmidt where the Eric Schmidt We learned that if you're not successful, it's not stealing.
00:04:03 --> 00:04:04 Call my lawyer.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:05 There you go.
00:04:05 --> 00:04:06 It is hard.
00:04:06 --> 00:04:07 It is a hard way of doing it.
00:04:08 --> 00:04:17 On the other hand, though, if the market isn't there, you do have the luxury of steering the market in the direction that you want to take it, right?
00:04:17 --> 00:04:19 So can we think about products like that?
00:04:19 --> 00:04:23 Yeah, this is examples that there was no market and then suddenly.
00:04:23 --> 00:04:26 An entry came and everybody kind of followed along, right?
00:04:27 --> 00:04:29 What about the very first Sony Walkman?
00:04:30 --> 00:04:33 I do remember people carrying their big box cassette tapes, right?
00:04:33 --> 00:04:34 boom boxes, basically.
00:04:35 --> 00:04:36 And then the Walkman was launched.
00:04:37 --> 00:04:38 You could carry in your pocket this thing.
00:04:39 --> 00:04:42 You still had to carry all your tapes with you, but it was very portable.
00:04:42 --> 00:04:45 And the market went along with that for the longest time.
00:04:45 --> 00:04:50 You think about all the MP3 players that ensued right after that.
00:04:50 --> 00:04:54 And then the functionality got absorbed into more of a general device, the smartphone.
00:04:54 --> 00:05:02 So that's an example, of how the market was developed by using an initial product, and then the product was improved upon afterwards.
00:05:02 --> 00:05:43 Like there's a few things on this list market, market development that should be familiar to someone who's in this pre market fit crossing the chasm phase, which is a lot of technical validation you probably have a lot of concerns with product stability, cause you probably got some things that are duct tape together with string or maybe you're even before that we haven't built anything where you've got waiting lists or it's a sleek websites with promises of things in the future maybe you have a, you're running a beta program, like a little tiny program for I think about in Large companies you'll have a small vendor servicing a large company, hoping to hook the big whale of a customer or whatever, where they'll be running little beta programs for individual teams.
00:05:43 --> 00:05:47 And if it's successful, they're hoping that they can like consultancies are this way.
00:05:47 --> 00:05:53 They're hoping they're like, oh, we'll get in and Get this hook this whale and then we can have a major consultancy or whatever, whether it happens or not.
00:05:53 --> 00:05:59 it's that kind of feeling is like we're at the edge of something we haven't quite found our market fit.
00:05:59 --> 00:05:59 Yeah.
00:05:59 --> 00:06:08 I think it's important if you're in that kind of a space to make sure you hit the real needs and don't waste your time on the wishes, wants and desires.
00:06:08 --> 00:06:08 Yeah.
00:06:08 --> 00:06:10 Just so that you can say, look, we can do this.
00:06:10 --> 00:06:15 We can also do some of these other things later, but your core functionality can be met with this.
00:06:15 --> 00:06:16 Yeah.
00:06:16 --> 00:06:19 It's like small team, many people wearing many hats.
00:06:19 --> 00:06:21 Not scaled at this stage.
00:06:21 --> 00:06:22 flat hierarchy in the org.
00:06:22 --> 00:06:28 not a lot of like this person's boss and this skip level that, and this level six, level eight, that, whatever no, it's not.
00:06:28 --> 00:06:31 The small entrepreneurial companies often start this way.
00:06:31 --> 00:06:31 the founder.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 Rolls up their sleeve and they're coding as well they're not in some corner office.
00:06:36 --> 00:06:41 so you've got a crappy little Service or product or whatever that's running.
00:06:41 --> 00:06:51 It takes manpower to keep it running like there's not a lot of bet on architecture or UX refinement, or you probably don't have a UX designer or researcher or whatever.
00:06:51 --> 00:06:56 Some people might different podcasts we've talked about the different profile, you won't have a dedicated scrum master or whatever.
00:06:56 --> 00:07:05 Like people be figuring out there may nobody's an expert at, and also one of the things we talked about is when we moved to the growth stage, I guess we're moving to the growth stage now Oh, I wanted to talk about moving.
00:07:05 --> 00:07:06 the next stage is the growth stage.
00:07:07 --> 00:07:10 We finished talking about the MVP market development phase.
00:07:10 --> 00:07:12 The next phase is a growth phase.
00:07:12 --> 00:07:23 we'll talk about the growth phase and then at the end of the growth phase category, we'll talk, about moving from MVP to the growth phase because there's some things to expect when you're in that phase for sure.
00:07:23 --> 00:07:28 So in the growth phase, this is when your company starts blowing up, you know what I mean?
00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 When you go from 10, 12 people and be like, who are all these new people?
00:07:31 --> 00:07:32 And now you're 50 people.
00:07:32 --> 00:07:47 And maybe you're 150 people or whatever over the course of a year or two years, I mean company I was at once I started as employee number 32 and I remember when we had the 300 employees and I didn't know everyone the company Yeah, I just felt lost.
00:07:48 --> 00:07:52 I was like what what happened felt like I didn't know what happened so quickly Yeah, I was like what happened.
00:07:52 --> 00:07:59 I mean, you know product market fit and and and this growth stage happened It's a nice problem to have as long as you're harnessing it properly.
00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 Otherwise you're just gonna fester.
00:08:01 --> 00:08:09 This is where you have managers come in because the entrepreneur himself or herself, they cannot now work with everybody that's there.
00:08:09 --> 00:08:10 It's just way too many people.
00:08:10 --> 00:08:24 this is in this growth phase, this is where we are bringing on additional teams, or maybe we're trying to do it slow where we just expand the core team or like a typical thing that happens at this stage is the silos begin appearing and two engineers.
00:08:24 --> 00:08:32 Now all the engineers are going to sit over there and the analyst is going to sit over here and then the executives sit with the other executives and that's their main team.
00:08:32 --> 00:08:40 We'll just get somebody to manage the engineers and throw them over here and they can figure out and in the process, I feel like you lose that nimbleness that a small company has.
00:08:40 --> 00:08:40 Right.
00:08:41 --> 00:08:42 You get a lot of inertia creeping in.
00:08:43 --> 00:08:46 So what happens in the, that's, so that stuff is what's happening on the teams.
00:08:46 --> 00:08:55 what is happening from a product perspective at this point of like, you have rapid development because you're bringing on more, you're probably bringing on more people.
00:08:55 --> 00:09:01 If you've ever been on a team where the product person is expected to feed the development team with backlog items faster.
00:09:01 --> 00:09:02 Like, Oh, you've got to.
00:09:03 --> 00:09:18 Give everyone things to work on like that's this type of like you're in growth probably in that kind of thing Yeah, and as far as the product itself what happens to it is it starts to morph pretty quickly with Features that go left right up down You get a lot of stuff added to it.
00:09:18 --> 00:09:24 Yeah, and as long as it's added in a disciplined way That's I guess that's controlled growth, right?
00:09:24 --> 00:09:26 But often that doesn't happen.
00:09:26 --> 00:09:35 Sometimes what happens at this level is people hear Feedback from different customers and without a coordinated effort, they'll say oh this customer is screaming.
00:09:35 --> 00:09:41 We have to have this feature They want it Added in somebody does the same thing about another feature added in.
00:09:41 --> 00:09:45 So you have, you're growing, but you're growing a Franken monster at this stage.
00:09:45 --> 00:09:45 Right.
00:09:45 --> 00:09:51 So, so I'm hearing two things from what you're saying is number one like product management probably is entering the picture at some point.
00:09:51 --> 00:10:02 So whereas the founder might have done prioritization before, maybe they're swamped by other sales activities or new markets or new features or their pet projects, who knows what they're and, and maybe you're bringing product management.
00:10:02 --> 00:10:23 And the other thing is process could handle it to, to a certain point if your company's still like, not, I mean not when you're like 150 people, process is not gonna handle that, but process could handle it if you're looking to say, well it used to be the founder and the entire team that went to all the demos and went pitched to all the new sales and did all the implementations and did their own stunts.
00:10:23 --> 00:10:23 Right.
00:10:23 --> 00:10:29 But now the engineers they're talking to customers less and less because they're stressed to get all these deadlines out and whatever.
00:10:29 --> 00:10:37 And now we're struggling to get feedback, whereas before, like we couldn't, we couldn't, like it was just built into the system of we were always talking to these customers.
00:10:37 --> 00:10:44 So like now where there's this subtle divorcing from talking to customers all the time, and now we're seeking.
00:10:44 --> 00:10:49 So we're getting it from whoever is going to give it to well Gary from sales told us this is what the customer needed.
00:10:49 --> 00:10:50 So we did it as a higher priority.
00:10:51 --> 00:10:55 Now product comes in because sales is fighting with the executives and development's fighting with everyone.
00:10:55 --> 00:10:56 And I think you're right.
00:10:56 --> 00:11:01 Fully said that maybe the entrepreneurs now occupy trying to get funding to keep the company growing.
00:11:01 --> 00:11:06 This is where I think at this stage is where you get the squeaky wheel syndrome coming in.
00:11:06 --> 00:11:06 Right.
00:11:06 --> 00:11:10 Whoever says something loudest, they get the feature in, right.
00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 Well, they have their way and on, on you go.
00:11:12 --> 00:11:14 The other thing that happens at this stage is.
00:11:15 --> 00:11:21 You've got a few customers, whether they're still pilot, whatever you have, you have a few customers by the stage you're growing.
00:11:21 --> 00:11:21 Yeah.
00:11:21 --> 00:11:25 So you've kind of reached escape velocity when it comes to product mindset.
00:11:25 --> 00:11:26 This is the right product to build, right?
00:11:26 --> 00:11:27 Yes.
00:11:27 --> 00:11:28 There is a market, right.
00:11:28 --> 00:11:29 We know we're doing.
00:11:29 --> 00:11:35 And those customers that you have, that you garnered so far need to be taken care of.
00:11:35 --> 00:11:38 So your team is now going to be split.
00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 You may have a function called support, right?
00:11:42 --> 00:11:43 Customer support, whatever.
00:11:43 --> 00:11:52 So now you're starting to break away from the model where the team that built it, ran it, and now it's some other people that are supporting that, right?
00:11:52 --> 00:11:53 Oh Yeah.
00:11:53 --> 00:11:54 I could see that.
00:11:54 --> 00:11:58 I could see that, which is like, I completely understand it, although I don't believe in it.
00:11:58 --> 00:12:03 I believe in you build it, you own it the other thing that could happen is you don't put anything in place for those support people.
00:12:03 --> 00:12:06 And it's just like somebody running around with their hair on fire full time.
00:12:06 --> 00:12:10 it's like customer support becomes someone's job rather than a function of the business.
00:12:10 --> 00:12:12 I guess I could see what you're saying.
00:12:12 --> 00:12:15 But only implemented in the worst way that I could possibly think to implement it.
00:12:15 --> 00:12:16 For sure.
00:12:16 --> 00:12:19 But again, I'm sure you can think of people that I've known that have done that job.
00:12:19 --> 00:12:21 They basically, they're not armed with any tools.
00:12:21 --> 00:12:21 Right.
00:12:21 --> 00:12:24 And the road map is devoid of anything that's going to help them.
00:12:24 --> 00:12:30 Like, we're just thinking about landing new sales and implementing new features that will bring new customers in.
00:12:30 --> 00:12:34 It is not about stabilizing the system technical debt is rampant at this point.
00:12:34 --> 00:12:41 Technical debt meaning you're crushing your development team to keep the system running while everyone else is out there, you know.
00:12:42 --> 00:12:46 Like, have you ever been in a company where they're running out and hiring salespeople left and right, right?
00:12:46 --> 00:12:53 Well, this is exactly the stage at which now people's, executives eyes are now on you know, launching the company on the market, right?
00:12:53 --> 00:12:57 So, you have to have some kind of capitalization before you can float the company.
00:12:57 --> 00:13:01 That's what you're doing, is your salespeople are incentivized to Book orders.
00:13:01 --> 00:13:13 Yeah So not a lot of automation in this phase or do you think automation like where do you think like qa would enter you think like You'll hire like your one token QA person at this point in the, in the company.
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 Like, yeah, I think it depends on the rate at which you're expanding.
00:13:16 --> 00:13:20 So if you're expanding at a rapid pace, you may hire more than one.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:24 But yeah, typically this is where the QA function is spawned, right.
00:13:24 --> 00:13:30 In the company, because you've got people that are just busy building features everywhere.
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 And bad quality stuff is now going out the door.
00:13:34 --> 00:13:42 The customers aren't happy, so it's more of a reaction, typically, rather than a proactive, here's how we're going to do this, we'll inspect for quality, you know.
00:13:42 --> 00:13:47 As we, as we're building it, right, as opposed to, we'll wait until it's needed.
00:13:47 --> 00:13:52 So there's team scaling, there's infrastructure scaling, there's like a massive amount of feature development happening.
00:13:53 --> 00:13:57 Potentially an equal massive amount of technical debt being taken on, and That's another thing.
00:13:57 --> 00:14:01 Technical Debt takes a back shelf because you want these features out quick.
00:14:01 --> 00:14:05 the other thing that happens here is somebody might actually start watching metrics at this point.
00:14:05 --> 00:14:16 If they weren't in the first phase, they might actually start doing it now watching metrics cause that like, managing mature product lines where you're kind of deciding where to put your development dollars.
00:14:17 --> 00:14:20 And I'm not going to put my development dollars into features that nobody's using.
00:14:20 --> 00:14:26 And I might decide to just cut features that nobody uses, that is not the conversation.
00:14:26 --> 00:14:28 I don't feel in this phase that's going to happen.
00:14:28 --> 00:14:30 You know, it's too early for that right now.
00:14:30 --> 00:14:30 Okay.
00:14:30 --> 00:14:32 So we said we'd come back to it.
00:14:33 --> 00:14:35 We moving from the MVP phase.
00:14:36 --> 00:14:37 To the growth phase.
00:14:37 --> 00:14:47 So we already talked a little bit about shifting from stability of your core product, whatever it is your core feature, whatever it or features, I guess, to scaling.
00:14:48 --> 00:14:50 You know, supporting more users and scale.
00:14:50 --> 00:14:56 We talked about maybe now the QA person might get hired or somebody might get put in charge of, some kind of process.
00:14:56 --> 00:14:57 Yeah.
00:14:57 --> 00:15:00 Along with those processes will come the metrics you referred to earlier.
00:15:00 --> 00:15:03 And maybe now a product manager might join the company for the first time if they weren't.
00:15:03 --> 00:15:07 A founder, or somebody wasn't playing the role, somebody was playing the role, certainly.
00:15:07 --> 00:15:08 Right.
00:15:08 --> 00:15:09 So you're now formalizing more.
00:15:09 --> 00:15:15 You're thinking about those systems that you can integrate with now, right, as you're moving forward.
00:15:15 --> 00:15:16 To the next phase.
00:15:16 --> 00:15:22 when they start the company, systems integration, like system thinking would be top of mind, because everything is so small.
00:15:22 --> 00:15:30 But it does make sense, like as more features grow and the system gets more technical, like any one person's starting to lose focus of what the whole thing does.
00:15:31 --> 00:15:31 Yeah.
00:15:31 --> 00:15:36 This might be the first time that the company starts hammering things like capacity planning.
00:15:36 --> 00:15:36 Right.
00:15:37 --> 00:15:39 You know, ask for timelines and stuff like that.
00:15:39 --> 00:15:40 this might happen in this phase too.
00:15:41 --> 00:15:42 Depending on the people that you have.
00:15:42 --> 00:15:45 Again, that goes back I think to the metrics issue.
00:15:46 --> 00:15:47 Are people busy?
00:15:47 --> 00:15:49 Are we keeping, keeping them busy?
00:15:49 --> 00:15:49 Right.
00:15:49 --> 00:15:50 Measure their utilization.
00:15:51 --> 00:15:52 All right, let's move on.
00:15:52 --> 00:16:02 Let's move on to the, the tippy top of the curve, the beginning of potential beginning of decline, the flattening off phase called maturity.
00:16:02 --> 00:16:06 So maturity is still really not necessarily a flattening.
00:16:06 --> 00:16:09 It's just not a rapid rise as it was before.
00:16:10 --> 00:16:11 It could still be a rise.
00:16:11 --> 00:16:11 Yeah, that's true.
00:16:11 --> 00:16:16 I think this is the phase where you start thinking about optimizing how you're building.
00:16:16 --> 00:16:19 So things like automation kick in, right?
00:16:19 --> 00:16:26 The more automation you put in, the quicker you can get to market with things out of development.
00:16:26 --> 00:16:45 The other thing that happens here is, you've learned now, so you've had lots of feedback cycles from customers, and you might start thinking about potentially looking at things that are being asked for and say, Do we really need to keep putting those on the bolting it on here or do we need to Carve out a different product that we can migrate people to.
00:16:45 --> 00:16:48 So that thinking starts to happen, I think, right now.
00:16:48 --> 00:16:57 That is interesting because I have seen larger companies that have like their I don't know what they call it, they call it like an R& D unit, or like an R& D department or section or something.
00:16:57 --> 00:17:01 Like basically R& D is not done by the main teams that maintain the applications.
00:17:01 --> 00:17:07 The product teams that are maintaining the applications or applicant programs, whatever, in maturity state.
00:17:08 --> 00:17:19 They're not asked to do this, like Hey, this small subset of your features and see if it could survive in its own product, in a different market with a sexy new UI or UX, right?
00:17:19 --> 00:17:22 Like that, that they're not asking this team to do that.
00:17:22 --> 00:17:26 They're going to go get a different team to go back to The MVP phase.
00:17:26 --> 00:17:37 Even though what the innovation team might be doing is they might be trying to cannibalize the product because they know that it's in maturity, the business knows it's in maturity, and they're looking to leapfrog their own product.
00:17:38 --> 00:17:38 To the future.
00:17:38 --> 00:17:40 I've heard him call skunkworks as well.
00:17:40 --> 00:17:43 Yeah, but yeah, you're absolutely correct.
00:17:43 --> 00:17:52 So this is where sometimes though the underpinning of this isn't just along the lines of product thinking, It might be predicated on technology changes, right?
00:17:52 --> 00:17:57 So all your stuff was done in, I don't know, visual basic, and now you've got to move to another technology.
00:17:58 --> 00:18:01 So you might say, well, do we want to just rewrite or just write, develop a new program?
00:18:01 --> 00:18:10 I mean, like, if you're doing like automation activities or like back of the house functions maybe a lot of your automation is written in Python two x or whatever.
00:18:10 --> 00:18:10 Right.
00:18:10 --> 00:18:12 I was doing volunteer work.
00:18:12 --> 00:18:20 Where I was the developer and their application was written in PHP 5 and I had to upgrade them to PHP 7.
00:18:21 --> 00:18:29 And if you ever go through the PHP 5 to 7 transition, one of the things that they changed between 5 and 7 is how you connect to the database.
00:18:29 --> 00:18:40 Which is pretty critical if you're on the LAMP stack, because the M is MySQL, if you want your web application to keep talking to the database, which I assume you do, then you must upgrade your code.
00:18:40 --> 00:18:41 Why do that?
00:18:41 --> 00:19:03 Just stay on five forever, because you're not planning to implement any hot new features or whatever maybe if enough big security issues crop up, maybe that would push you into a one time investment just to get you over that stack, but that volunteer effort, I mean, they really had a tough time deciding to put all that manpower into going from five to seven Because there was no money in it.
00:19:03 --> 00:19:09 It was just a bunch of maintenance work and a bunch of hours and they weren't going to get anything because they wouldn't get anything on the other side of it.
00:19:09 --> 00:19:11 And you might hear that and be like, yeah, but then they can't even work on it.
00:19:11 --> 00:19:15 I mean, first of all, yes, you can work on an older version of PHP and still develop features.
00:19:16 --> 00:19:16 Yeah.
00:19:16 --> 00:19:17 You can't use newer stuff.
00:19:17 --> 00:19:17 That's true.
00:19:18 --> 00:19:29 They kind of hemmed and hawed over it because they were going to leave that product in the maturity stage until people stopped using it and then sunset it over time and then just maybe build a whole new application with whatever new technology is out there.
00:19:29 --> 00:19:35 So they just had no, they were going to keep taking in money from that application or whatever it was used for.
00:19:35 --> 00:19:36 I don't think they took in money for it.
00:19:36 --> 00:19:41 Didn't bring them new money to extend that site and work on it to add new features.
00:19:41 --> 00:19:43 They had all the features they ever needed to manage the business.
00:19:44 --> 00:19:45 They didn't need new features.
00:19:45 --> 00:19:50 So from their perspective, they had a tough time being like, why would we upgrade the infrastructure?
00:19:50 --> 00:20:13 So like the, what doesn't happen in this maturity stage, like massive architectural plan, replanning, refactoring, technical debt, this is kind of re you know, balancing and mitigation that kind of like not gonna have like large scale rewrites There's also a sort of almost sneaky product strategy where new features that are being asked for can be promised, but not on this platform.
00:20:13 --> 00:20:13 Right.
00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 So you'd say, well, we deliver all of those things, but you got to upgrade.
00:20:17 --> 00:20:17 Right.
00:20:17 --> 00:20:20 Which I think I've seen that used successfully elsewhere too.
00:20:21 --> 00:20:25 You could put those features in the current version and prolong that growth stage.
00:20:25 --> 00:20:29 But you're already getting maintenance dollars from these customers right?
00:20:29 --> 00:20:35 If the maintenance agreements are signed up such that you locked in the customer for three years, right?
00:20:35 --> 00:20:36 They get a discount.
00:20:36 --> 00:20:38 The longer term they sign up.
00:20:38 --> 00:20:39 You can keep them going.
00:20:39 --> 00:20:42 But at the same time, they want these new features.
00:20:42 --> 00:20:45 And you don't want to spend time developing on the older stuff.
00:20:45 --> 00:20:49 So you could start building a replacement product, right?
00:20:49 --> 00:20:56 And put those features in there, do the demos and so forth and get your customers to Plant a transition to the new system.
00:20:56 --> 00:20:59 Yeah, I've actually done this in product management.
00:20:59 --> 00:21:00 at least two companies that I've been at.
00:21:00 --> 00:21:12 what the case I will make is don't do whatever your whatever enhancements, sometimes enhancements need to be done to a system in maturity because they want to get one more customer or whether the company needs to get one more fix or whatever, one more hurrah out of it anyway.
00:21:12 --> 00:21:13 Okay.
00:21:13 --> 00:21:27 What I plan to do is to stand up some kind of technology that runs alongside this and then to basically deactivate certain features of the system that's in the maturity stage and build them up new in this other side by side.
00:21:27 --> 00:21:29 In mobile development, for example.
00:21:29 --> 00:21:32 There is an API that services the mobile application.
00:21:32 --> 00:21:43 And when you go and scan, for example, like you, you'll go open your mobile app, you'll scan a document, and then when you're done scanning document, you submit the document to this web endpoint.
00:21:43 --> 00:21:43 Right.
00:21:44 --> 00:21:51 When you're calling the endpoint you're calling, basically we could, we could say, well, for this function, you don't call the endpoint in the old software.
00:21:51 --> 00:21:54 You call the endpoint in the new software that's over here.
00:21:54 --> 00:22:02 And since we only had to recreate one single little tiny endpoint for saving this document, not all the rest of the stuff that pull, they all, both systems go to the same database.
00:22:02 --> 00:22:02 Sure.
00:22:03 --> 00:22:12 But The new backend for that API is over here in this new tiny little lightweight system that we built with this new functionality rather than as part of the monolith.
00:22:12 --> 00:22:17 That's deployed over here and the user doesn't know that they're really talking to two separate systems.
00:22:17 --> 00:22:19 They don't, but you could also use that to your advantage.
00:22:19 --> 00:22:26 If you can offer even a slight benefit of going to the new endpoint, let's say performance is quicker, right?
00:22:26 --> 00:22:30 It kind of helps you get the thinking in that user that.
00:22:30 --> 00:22:32 Everything's better in the new system.
00:22:32 --> 00:22:34 So plan to upgrade basically.
00:22:34 --> 00:22:38 Look, even this thing that used to take three seconds is now only taking a sub second, right.
00:22:38 --> 00:22:38 Or whatever.
00:22:39 --> 00:22:42 So yeah, as a product person, you can, you can do that.
00:22:42 --> 00:22:46 But yeah, well, what you can do is you can't get large scale rewrites.
00:22:46 --> 00:23:32 You're not going to get Oh, we're going to break apart the monolith or whatever you're going to get a, a keep the lights on attitude of, Oh, you know how I knew that my product was in this phase is when people would leave, the company would be real slow at replacing the people on the team, or maybe they would try to offshore the support of this, but the problem is there's so much tribal knowledge when you're a software is at this point that it's very difficult to anyway, so like when stuff moves from growth stage to maturity stage, I think we already talked about a couple of growth to maturity type of things like number one, you can expect the general feeling will be less electric when it moves into maturity phase, I expect it to be like Utilization and standardization and that kind of stuff to be like rampant in the program You're like, what is if you're still there from growth phase?
00:23:32 --> 00:23:36 You can be like what is all this stuff that I seem to be allergic to this is gross.
00:23:36 --> 00:23:37 Why do we have this?
00:23:37 --> 00:23:38 It's quite regimented by now.
00:23:39 --> 00:23:40 Yeah, because they have a pool of money.
00:23:40 --> 00:23:47 That's not increasing You know, the growth isn't there anymore and they're trying to Seek optimization, cost optimization.
00:23:47 --> 00:23:50 They're trying to cost cut their way into Yeah.
00:23:50 --> 00:23:51 More money.
00:23:51 --> 00:23:52 Exactly.
00:23:52 --> 00:23:52 This is weird.
00:23:53 --> 00:23:56 If somebody leaves and you don't replace them, that's saving money.
00:23:56 --> 00:23:56 Yeah.
00:23:56 --> 00:23:58 You know, or getting rid of people.
00:23:58 --> 00:24:03 So there's performance metrics, maybe a little more SLAs, process standardization.
00:24:04 --> 00:24:14 They might bring in people to, dare I say, bring in people to whip the team into shape to get more velocity out of them if you ever hear these things, it's, you probably have a.
00:24:14 --> 00:24:18 You're probably going through the growth to maturity transition and you might not like it.
00:24:18 --> 00:24:19 Yeah, absolutely.
00:24:19 --> 00:24:20 Optimization.
00:24:20 --> 00:24:21 Standardization.
00:24:21 --> 00:24:23 Yeah, and then so where do we go from here?
00:24:23 --> 00:24:28 So our last stage is sunset slash decline.
00:24:28 --> 00:24:29 I like sunset.
00:24:29 --> 00:24:29 We'll say sunset.
00:24:29 --> 00:24:33 in the sunset phase, your product clearly is in decline.
00:24:33 --> 00:24:36 You know, you're losing users or you're not signing up new people.
00:24:36 --> 00:24:37 People are leaving.
00:24:37 --> 00:24:38 maybe that's a plan thing.
00:24:38 --> 00:24:47 in my case I said like, Oh, when you scan and you're going to go to this API that's over here, or you're going to this feature, this whole feature or set of features is moving to the new stack.
00:24:47 --> 00:24:47 We did that too.
00:24:47 --> 00:24:49 I was on a team.
00:24:49 --> 00:24:58 I think it was a team lead actually on a team that was going through a decline stage where all the developers left and went and formed a new team on the hot new products that got all the money and visibility and everything.
00:24:58 --> 00:25:00 And we still had customers.
00:25:00 --> 00:25:02 It's just, there was no sales apparatus or marketing.
00:25:03 --> 00:25:07 You know, driving new customers into our pool and there was no addition.
00:25:07 --> 00:25:09 You know, when people leave the team, they wouldn't get replaced.
00:25:10 --> 00:25:13 So it's people that are there pretty much relegated to support.
00:25:14 --> 00:25:14 That's right.
00:25:14 --> 00:25:19 So one thing you could do, though, in this situation is start to align your customers.
00:25:19 --> 00:25:23 Current customers thinking into adopting the new product, right?
00:25:23 --> 00:25:27 By not only just doing demos and whatnot, but actually helping them migrate.
00:25:27 --> 00:25:32 I've been in a company where the company picked up the migration activity.
00:25:32 --> 00:25:34 So the, the effort, right?
00:25:34 --> 00:25:38 People involved, project manager the, the developers, et cetera.
00:25:38 --> 00:25:41 At no charge to the customer if they migrated.
00:25:41 --> 00:25:46 So there are things you can do to, entice your customers to move to your new product.
00:25:46 --> 00:25:49 This is a long tail, by the way, in some products, right?
00:25:49 --> 00:25:51 This can go on for a long, long time.
00:25:51 --> 00:25:54 So just like signs of the decline phase here.
00:25:54 --> 00:25:57 You know, you're doing security updates, not much else, to be honest.
00:25:57 --> 00:26:04 Like you really aren't, probably aren't doing feature development unless it's just like, Kind of refining a feature or two that making it a little less clunky.
00:26:04 --> 00:26:12 And then probably only after somebody, one of your customers at a higher level calls one of your executives at a higher level.
00:26:12 --> 00:26:15 And there's some harsh words said on the phone.
00:26:15 --> 00:26:17 This has to be for pretty important things too.
00:26:17 --> 00:26:21 I mean, you would stop doing bug fixes for trivial bugs, right?
00:26:21 --> 00:26:21 Things like that.
00:26:21 --> 00:26:22 Oh, that's probably long.
00:26:22 --> 00:26:25 I honestly, that is probably done in the maturity stage.
00:26:25 --> 00:26:31 You said all that, all the big triage sit down bug parties of let's go through a product and let's align.
00:26:31 --> 00:26:31 And.
00:26:32 --> 00:26:35 You know, QA's complaining, but there's no time or money to do that with.
00:26:36 --> 00:26:39 That stuff probably already happened in the maturity phase.
00:26:39 --> 00:26:43 And by this phase, you've moved fully to like, documentation.
00:26:43 --> 00:26:45 Of like, these are the known issues in the system.
00:26:46 --> 00:26:47 And you've made that clear.
00:26:47 --> 00:27:01 Available to your customers somehow or maybe your customers support people or whatever so that they can just kind of deflect when those issues do come up yeah, I mean, so look, we understand this is an issue, but it's remediated, it's fixed, it's not an issue in the new version.
00:27:01 --> 00:27:01 Yeah.
00:27:01 --> 00:27:02 Yeah.
00:27:02 --> 00:27:02 Yeah.
00:27:02 --> 00:27:28 You know, so any kind of like cutting over systems, archives, backups, whatever you have to do to store anything that's important, trying to coordinate customers off the system when it's convenient for them and you, because you're coordinating new roadmaps with the old customers and features because I've been a part of a migration or two in my time where you take old features that customers still are using the core features and you lift those first out of the product and you move those over to your new product.
00:27:28 --> 00:27:30 Hey, your new core features over here.
00:27:30 --> 00:27:32 It's got better response time.
00:27:32 --> 00:27:33 It's more robust.
00:27:33 --> 00:27:35 It's whatever you know.
00:27:35 --> 00:27:39 And like if you start with the core features and you migrate those over The core features have to go, right?
00:27:39 --> 00:27:41 So yeah, yeah.
00:27:41 --> 00:27:44 They like the lighters, but yeah, I mean, if the bread and butter has to be there still.
00:27:44 --> 00:27:47 So , moving from maturity to decline.
00:27:48 --> 00:27:49 , things that you can expect.
00:27:49 --> 00:27:52 Hopefully you can expect an actual sunset strategy.
00:27:52 --> 00:27:53 Like these are our timelines.
00:27:53 --> 00:27:55 These are the teams, these, whatever.
00:27:55 --> 00:28:05 I will tell you at the company I was in, it was like an unspoken we're just going to not replace people and be real shady about it because private equity is involved in those guys.
00:28:05 --> 00:28:06 They're just not gonna tell you.
00:28:06 --> 00:28:10 And you, and you should be smart enough to know that you're basically getting put out to pasture.
00:28:10 --> 00:28:11 Yeah.
00:28:11 --> 00:28:12 I've been at those companies too.
00:28:12 --> 00:28:14 They don't say anything publicly.
00:28:14 --> 00:28:17 So anyway, you're going to see a reduction in development scope.
00:28:17 --> 00:28:19 You're going to see a reduction in development the money to fund development.
00:28:19 --> 00:28:35 Hopefully you will see a sunset strategy and people from, you know the teams that are being sunset will be moved over to the new development teams or something like that hopefully you don't just one day show up and that there's a lock and chain on the doors and a little box on the floor.
00:28:35 --> 00:28:35 That's right.
00:28:35 --> 00:28:37 Which you know, Hey, that happens too.
00:28:37 --> 00:28:39 it does keep the resume updated.
00:28:39 --> 00:28:52 Yeah drastic what happens but I thing to talk about in this podcast is going in the opposite direction Yeah, and you really could jump from any direction to any direction, but I think it's cool to talk about going from decline or actually it would be maturity.
00:28:52 --> 00:28:53 It wouldn't be decline back into growth.
00:28:53 --> 00:28:56 It'd be maturity Back into growth.
00:28:56 --> 00:29:05 So like you you've kind of leveled off and then something happens in the market and then there's a big influx of cash for some reason And now you're basically going backwards.
00:29:06 --> 00:29:12 Well, classically where I've seen this is where you're in that phase, but then you look, you go into another market.
00:29:12 --> 00:29:12 Yeah.
00:29:12 --> 00:29:14 So geographically maybe, right.
00:29:15 --> 00:29:21 And you have more customers now and they have certain new things that they want and they expect right now.
00:29:21 --> 00:29:23 They can't wait till the next version.
00:29:23 --> 00:29:28 So in order to get that business right, you would now write those features in.
00:29:28 --> 00:29:29 Growing internationally.
00:29:29 --> 00:29:31 So what would happen with the teams in that?
00:29:31 --> 00:29:35 Would there be a mad scramble to or just getting the teams to work 24 7?
00:29:35 --> 00:29:36 All of the above.
00:29:36 --> 00:29:37 Mad scramble.
00:29:37 --> 00:29:38 Yeah, definitely.
00:29:39 --> 00:29:41 You know, the teams work harder, longer.
00:29:41 --> 00:29:41 Not better.
00:29:42 --> 00:29:42 Okay.
00:29:42 --> 00:29:42 Yeah.
00:29:42 --> 00:29:43 Alright.
00:29:43 --> 00:29:46 So, going backwards from maturity back to growth.
00:29:46 --> 00:29:54 Causing havoc you know, cause the other thing I wanted to bring up and then we can go from maturity or from growth all the way back to the MVP mode.
00:29:55 --> 00:30:03 For example, if you, if you go from maturity, Right, you got a team, they're a stable team, they're keeping your system running, they're not really asking you to do new features, the architecture is kind of the architecture.
00:30:03 --> 00:30:04 You know what I mean?
00:30:05 --> 00:30:06 They're just kind of keeping the lights on.
00:30:06 --> 00:30:12 And then you go to that team and you say, Hey, I've noticed this slow trail off of revenue and customers.
00:30:12 --> 00:30:16 I want you guys to shake up the market and do some MVP work.
00:30:16 --> 00:30:17 True MVP work.
00:30:17 --> 00:30:18 Talk to customers.
00:30:18 --> 00:30:19 Get a little crazy.
00:30:20 --> 00:30:32 That would, that's, that's interesting to throw at a team in maturity because I almost wonder if they even have that skill set anymore now that they're so far from the MVP phase have you managed to keep the same people around?
00:30:32 --> 00:30:34 The skill sets have changed probably by now.
00:30:34 --> 00:30:35 Right.
00:30:35 --> 00:30:45 If you got new people in, you're basically starting off from scratch anyway, but it would be those innovation people that you would have to work with that Scott works to say, let's go back.
00:30:45 --> 00:31:05 And deconstruct this product and see what we can do with it to shake it up Almost inevitably whatever results from there will not be the same product What i'm saying is it will be a new version It would not be the same version because if you put all of that in the same version it's like trying to change the tire on a car while it's being driven at 60 miles an hour on the highway.
00:31:05 --> 00:31:07 It's very difficult to pull that one off.
00:31:07 --> 00:31:11 I can see how that can go badly wrong pretty quickly.
00:31:12 --> 00:31:16 But if you have a separation of versions, almost products, you can pull that off.
00:31:17 --> 00:31:17 Yeah.
00:31:17 --> 00:31:20 Well, I've seen this in maturity back to growth.
00:31:20 --> 00:31:24 I've seen this, like the, the PHP upgrade thing that I was talking about before.
00:31:24 --> 00:31:26 They did go through that upgrade.
00:31:26 --> 00:31:29 That would be like maturity getting pushed back into the growth phase.
00:31:30 --> 00:31:36 And it, because what they did there was they did a massive restructuring of all the underlying code.
00:31:36 --> 00:31:53 basically refactoring of all the code that was in the system in order to do a major upgrade and also to clean things up, but they went ahead with that upgrade because what they wanted out of there was a more modern, sexier UI that would blow their competitors out of the water, which they did end up getting.
00:31:53 --> 00:31:55 And they went back into growth phase from that.
00:31:55 --> 00:32:02 So but it took a mass again, we were all volunteers, so it took a massive influx of this was a volunteer hours, right?
00:32:02 --> 00:32:05 Volunteer hours that otherwise could have gone to other volunteer things, right?
00:32:06 --> 00:32:08 But yeah, it took a massive amount of effort to get them there.
00:32:08 --> 00:32:17 to push them into, you know I guess it was strategic though because they said like, Hey, if our UI was better, maybe our system wouldn't be in this maturity phase.
00:32:18 --> 00:32:38 With this long tail maybe we could bring it to different markets So I guess i'm kind of agreeing with what you were saying it was the same product, but they were shipping it to different markets So they could grow with those different markets I mean, yeah, I think that aligns with what I was saying about opening to new markets the same product that you have but then yeah adding features Right, to suit those markets.
00:32:38 --> 00:32:40 Well, that was on the Kano model.
00:32:40 --> 00:32:57 Sorry, I want to talk about the Kano model, but on the Kano model, those are those features that are expected to even get your foot in the door and if you don't have them like, having a vehicle that starts and runs and doesn't just stall out at every time you get to a stoplight that's like, that shouldn't be extra and no one should have to worry about, you know what I mean?
00:32:57 --> 00:32:58 I pay to not have that.
00:32:58 --> 00:33:01 So now you go, yeah, we'll do a podcast on the tomorrow.
00:33:01 --> 00:33:03 you're never gonna buy a car that, is gonna act like that.
00:33:03 --> 00:33:03 No.
00:33:03 --> 00:33:03 You know what I mean?
00:33:03 --> 00:33:05 Wouldn't even get into the market.
00:33:05 --> 00:33:10 So for that company, a modern UI was one that even got you in the door, you know?
00:33:10 --> 00:33:13 Growth back to MVP phase.
00:33:13 --> 00:33:18 the most likely situation here is you're probing different market segments.
00:33:18 --> 00:33:20 same market, different segments of the market.
00:33:20 --> 00:33:24 You're trying to grow horizontally rather than penetrate different markets.
00:33:24 --> 00:33:25 Yeah, I agree with that.
00:33:25 --> 00:33:31 when you're going back to development, it's not necessarily to be looked upon as a restart.
00:33:31 --> 00:33:32 You're not necessarily doing that.
00:33:32 --> 00:33:38 Because you're going back there with an intent to do something different than what was done before.
00:33:38 --> 00:33:41 That really drives where you go with this, right?
00:33:41 --> 00:33:47 Whether you go that way or you just say, we're going to curtail this product and say it is what it is and come up with a new product.
00:33:47 --> 00:33:47 Yeah.
00:33:47 --> 00:33:56 If you've got a lot of bloat in your product, you might want to remove some of that and focus on what it was intended to do in the first place, right?
00:33:56 --> 00:33:57 the core purpose of the product.
00:33:57 --> 00:33:58 You go back to that.
00:33:58 --> 00:34:35 I mean, also when you're in the growth phase or really even the maturity phase, I worry when you're a little closer to the maturity phase whether you have this talent on your Program or your teams anymore to go all the way back to the MVP phase to try to probe different markets and Maybe we can take our document scanning and change it for the health care field and then just have document scanning for health Care on its own without the rest of the app, spin it off into its own mobile app and maybe it can be helpful we found that most doctors and nurses don't need just photos taken to upload the document here because all their stuff is kind of standardized and they need this other thing.
00:34:35 --> 00:34:35 Okay.
00:34:35 --> 00:34:36 So we learned something.
00:34:37 --> 00:34:38 do we still want to pursue that market?
00:34:38 --> 00:34:39 Meh, probably not.
00:34:39 --> 00:34:41 That's a great example, yeah, of why you would go back.
00:34:41 --> 00:34:53 the development, everything we talked about is like, oh, you got capacity planning, and utilization's probably crept in, you got these Gantt charts or whatever, all the stuff you're doing in maturity to make sure that you're as optimized as you can be.
00:34:53 --> 00:34:56 Like, none of that serves you in the MVP phase.
00:34:56 --> 00:35:06 You know, moving fast, listening to customers, talking directly to customers not doing what your boss says, like all that stuff that serves you in the MVP phase, I would worry is gone by the time you get to the maturity phase.
00:35:06 --> 00:35:07 Sure.
00:35:07 --> 00:35:08 I agree with that.
00:35:08 --> 00:35:09 Yeah, I agree.
00:35:09 --> 00:35:09 That's gone.
00:35:09 --> 00:35:11 And your mindset has changed now, right?
00:35:11 --> 00:35:13 Because it's become more regimented.
00:35:13 --> 00:35:15 The whole environment's become more regimented.
00:35:15 --> 00:35:17 You have layers of management now.
00:35:17 --> 00:35:21 So if you do have to go back with that team, I don't know if you're going to have success.
00:35:21 --> 00:35:30 Because their habits have changed, the way they work has changed, and they're supposed to think freely and have full access to customers and fast feedback loops.
00:35:30 --> 00:35:30 I don't know.
00:35:30 --> 00:35:31 Maybe they can.
00:35:31 --> 00:35:32 Maybe they can pivot.
00:35:32 --> 00:35:33 That's an interesting one.
00:35:33 --> 00:35:36 I'd like to explore more maybe on different podcast.
00:35:36 --> 00:35:41 interesting topic for me, different stages of your product life cycle.
00:35:41 --> 00:35:43 And kind of what goes on in each stage.
00:35:43 --> 00:36:05 It's important to know what stage your product or products are in because a lot of the Marty Cagan stuff try it out with the market and check the usability and viability and technical feasibility and all that kind of stuff like all the "ilities" yeah, if you're in some of these other phases i'm not gonna say marty kagan doesn't apply because I think The Good practices can always apply in product management and software development.
00:36:05 --> 00:36:09 But some of these phases value that stuff a lot less than other phases is what I'm saying.
00:36:09 --> 00:36:10 Yeah, that's well put.
00:36:10 --> 00:36:18 I just wanted to make a point before we close that even though these models are shown as phases that are equal, that's not really reality.
00:36:18 --> 00:36:28 So there's different spans on these for example, maturity could be a long phase and it doesn't necessarily have to go down.
00:36:28 --> 00:36:28 All that quickly.
00:36:28 --> 00:36:29 It'll go down.
00:36:29 --> 00:36:31 Eventually, it'll start to trend down.
00:36:31 --> 00:36:34 Likewise with decline, decline can be a very long tail.
00:36:34 --> 00:36:35 It just depends.
00:36:35 --> 00:36:36 On the product.
00:36:36 --> 00:36:43 We could probably build some theoretical diagrams of like, here, product A and product A is in growth while product C is in decline.
00:36:43 --> 00:36:49 But the decline roadmap cause I've decommissioned and shut off apps before, and that's the way it goes.
00:36:49 --> 00:36:55 you basically, you put the milestone on the timeline and say, when we've done enough here.
00:36:55 --> 00:36:58 That's when we all agree to make the call to shut off the application.
00:36:58 --> 00:36:59 That doesn't have to be time bound.
00:36:59 --> 00:37:01 That could just be functionality bound.
00:37:01 --> 00:37:01 Sure.
00:37:01 --> 00:37:01 Yeah.
00:37:01 --> 00:37:03 You can monitor that too, can't you?
00:37:03 --> 00:37:05 You can say, Hey, how, how are people using it?
00:37:05 --> 00:37:06 That's right.
00:37:06 --> 00:37:11 It gets to a threshold, communicate that out and say, we'll take care of you, but we've got a better way to do this.
00:37:11 --> 00:37:14 Well, hopefully this has been informative, at least we enjoyed it.
00:37:14 --> 00:37:18 Let us know what else you'd like us to talk about down below in the comments.
00:37:18 --> 00:37:19 And don't forget to like, and subscribe.
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