Agile Phase 4: retirement

Purpose

To find redundant, duplicate, or low value features of the system that based on user research should be retired.

This may result in the retirement of an entire system, however that is not the ideal situation. A system that is retired in its entirety likely had many features that could have been removed previously.

Instead try regularly adapting to users needs and frequently retire the features that users no longer value. This strategy keeps your system as focused as possible on the high value effort and will extend its life by allow teams to spend time ensuring that it stays secure and functional.

How is it done?

• Talk to real users and get their feedback
• Use website analytics to monitor the usage of product features,
• Collect and resolve bugs & defects quickly to ensure that those features continues to provide value to the users.
• Once that feature reaches a point where it is shown for various reasons to no longer provide value, then that feature can be retired.
• The retirement phase should be ongoing from the moment you build your first mock up.

A feature having lots of bugs and defects should not be the reason you retire a feature. Sometimes your features just need a little care and feeding.