The Product Death Cycle: How to Recognize and Reverse It
As a product manager, one of your biggest responsibilities is understanding your users and iterating your product to meet their needs. However, taking this too far can lead your product into something called the product death cycle.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explain what the product death cycle is, why it happens, and most importantly - how you can avoid it as a PM to create a product with happy users that continues to grow.
What is the Product Death Cycle?
The product death cycle refers to the situation where a product development team focuses too heavily on customer feedback rather than having a strong product vision.
This leads to a vicious cycle where:
The product launches but no one uses it initially 😬
The team asks customers what features are missing 🤔
They build those features based on feedback ⚒️
Still, no one uses the product much 😱
So they ask for more feedback and build more features ➰
...And the cycle continues until time or money runs out, leading to the “death” of the product because it never gained traction.
This often happens because the team thinks they are doing the right thing - listening to customers and giving them what they ask for. But good intentions here can lead to disaster. 💀
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Why Does This Happen?
There are a few key reasons why PMs and product teams get stuck in this death cycle:
- Lack of Strong Product Vision 🎯
Having a clear, focused product vision is key. As Jeff Bezos says, you need to be stubborn on the vision but flexible on the details.
Without that North Star, it’s easy to get blown off course by every gust of customer feedback. Then you end up with a muddled product trying to be everything to everyone vs. a focused product that delights your core users
