Portfolio Grooming

Marty Cagan argues that every technology company has more product ideas than capacity to build them, so the real work of portfolio planning is deciding where to invest. Rather than only adding headcount, companies can free up capacity by reviewing their whole portfolio and classifying each product. He describes three levels: sunset products that no longer earn enough return, sustaining products kept running with minimal spend, and investment products that deserve dedicated teams. Assigning a PM and engineers to everything is a common mistake, and per-product KPIs are the signal for knowing when a product has hit diminishing returns.

01Key takeaways

• Treat portfolio planning as deciding where to invest, since you will always have more ideas than capacity.
• Classify each product as sunset, sustaining, or investment rather than assuming every product needs a PM and engineers.
• Make the full cost of keeping a product alive visible, including PM, engineering, QA, support, and marketing time.
• Plan a respectful customer transition when phasing out a product, offering alternatives or incentives to move.
• Set a KPI for every product; if investment does not move the KPI, reconsider the decisions or move the product to sustaining.
• Expect resistance to sustaining designations, and push through it to free resources for real investments.

02Key sections

The capacity problem

Companies always have more ideas than capacity, so resource constraints are a fact of life. Portfolio planning is about choosing where to put limited investment.

Sunset: retiring dogs

Products kept alive only by inertia and with weak returns should be phased out. Teams must make the true cost of supporting them visible and handle customer transitions carefully.

Sustaining: milking cows

Sustaining products are maintained at low cost to hold KPIs steady and generate revenue. They get bug fixes and compliance changes but no dedicated team or new features.

Investment: funding the kids

Investment products are where product organizations should focus, with dedicated PM, UX, and engineering resources and management attention aimed at improving KPIs.

Using KPIs to decide

Per-product KPIs reveal whether an investment is working. Flat KPIs despite effort suggest either poor product decisions or that the product has reached diminishing returns.

03From the post

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04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.