When to kill a product

After ordering ‘Agile Web Development with Rails’ by Dave Thomas et al, 6 week ago (expect delivery 4 weeks). I final picked it up on Friday. Started reading it on Saturday.

ISBN-10 0-9776166-3-0
ISBN-13 978-0-9776166-3-3
(as I always suspected, the last digit of an ISBN is a check digit :)

One bit in the Preface struck me as being worth a blog post. The last two paragraphs.

... Instead, I found myself rewriting the content. Some chapters from the original have been removed, and new chapters have been added. Many of the rest have been completely rewritten. So, it became clear that we were looking at a second edition-basically a new book.

It seems strange to be releasing a second edition at a time when the first edition is still among the best-selling programming books in the world. But Rails has changed, and we need to change this book with it.

Enjoy!

Dave Thomas
October 2006

For me, this is good example of when to kill a product way before the end of its economic life. All to often you see companies wait for a product to stop being profitable before they release the replacement product.

Know of one case, where a supplement company had a successful protein bar, with three flavours. They let the product get that old before replacing it, that they felt they could only justify redeveloping one of the flavours. Sadly, my favourate was one of the flavours lost. Use to buy boxes (12) of the stuff!

Today, I don’t buy any of this company’s products. Just too trailing edge!

After reading the Preface & first chapter, it looks like an interest and worth while read.


Gnoll110