lifecycle-play-advisor

# 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`](../workshop-facilitation/SKILL.md) 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 count | Stage | Implication |
|---|---|---|
| 0-1 | Mature and healthy | No play needed. Invest or leave alone |
| 2-3 | Mature and softening | Extension territory; watch quarterly |
| 4-5 | Crossing into decline | Pick a play deliberately, now |
| 6-7 | In decline | Replace 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:**

| Pressure | Points toward | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Demand-side | **Extend** | The core