The sun also sets: Ending the life of a software product

Abstract

Sunsetting a software product is a painful and frustrating process, whether it happens in times of crisis or in an organized and planned manner. It is surprising that little information is available on how to perform sunsetting and it appears to be a blind spot in software product management literature. This paper describes the sunsetting method and provides practitioners with a well-defined process of how software products must be taken out of development, maintenance, and finally use. With the sunsetting method, product managers will have as little trouble as possible based on the experiences of others. The process description is elaborated using a method description. Furthermore, three retrospective case studies have been conducted to evaluate the method. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.