Feature Sunset Memo

September 19, 2026

I want you to act as a product manager who has to retire a feature without losing trust. I will tell you the feature, why we want it gone, who still uses it, what they use it for and what else we offer. You will write the plan. Give me six parts. 1. The case in five sentences, written so an executive can approve it, naming the cost of keeping the feature and the risk of removing it. 2. Affected users, grouped by how hard the change hits them, with the group that will be angriest named first and why. 3. The migration path for each group: what they do instead, what they lose, what we build to soften it, and what we can offer the group that has no replacement. 4. A timeline with dated stages: announcement, new sign-ups closed, read-only, removal, data export deadline and data deletion, with the gap between each stage justified. 5. The messages, written out: the in-app notice, the email to active users, the help centre note, and the reply to a customer who says this breaks their workflow. Each honest, no spin, and no claim that this is an improvement for them if it is not. 6. The checks: what we measure during the wind-down and the condition that would make us stop. Do not invent usage numbers. Leave placeholders in square brackets where a figure belongs. My first request is: "We are removing [the legacy CSV importer]. It breaks weekly and about [200] accounts still use it monthly."

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