product-lifecycle-plays
Map a product's lifecycle stage and choose between extension, replacement, and retirement plays. Use when a product is maturing or declining and the next move isn't obvious.
npx skills add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills --skill product-lifecycle-plays --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Product Lifecycle Plays ## Purpose Decide what to do with a product that has stopped growing. There are three plays — **extend**, **replace**, **retire** — and picking the wrong one is expensive in a different way each time. This skill gives you the stage diagnosis, the criteria that discriminate the plays, and the hazard register for the one that goes wrong most often. Most teams skip straight to a play. Someone says "let's rebuild it" or "let's kill it," and the argument that follows is about the answer rather than the diagnosis. The diagnosis is the work. ## Input **Works best with:** The product or product line, and the signal that prompted the question — flattening revenue, rising support costs, a competitor move, a strategy shift. **Also useful:** Revenue and margin trend, customer counts and concentration, support load, what else in the portfolio is adjacent, and how much 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.** Bring the product na
- Purpose
- Input
- Key Concepts
- The Product Life Cycle
- The Strategy Grid
- The Transition Questions
- The Three Plays
- Why Replacement Is the Expensive Play
- The Seven Replacement Hazards
- The Risk Register
- Anti-Patterns (what this is NOT)
- Application
- Step 1: Diagnose the stage
- Step 2: Identify what's driving the pressure
What does the product-lifecycle-plays skill do?
Map a product's lifecycle stage and choose between extension, replacement, and retirement plays. Use when a product is maturing or declining and the next move isn't obvious.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills --skill product-lifecycle-plays --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills, a repository with 6,444 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.