When a feature deserves retirement
Low adoption is not always a failure of communication — sometimes it is permission to remove.
Check whether anyone still depends on the feature for a critical job. Quiet does not always mean unused — it can mean a small, high-stakes audience.
Measure support load and engineering maintenance against adoption. Expensive features with thin use are candidates for sunset, not polish.
Give remaining users a path and a date. Silent removals create distrust that poisons the next launch.
Capture what you learned. Retirements should feed the next taxonomy and discovery checklist.
Celebrate the freed capacity. Adoption analytics earn trust when they also unlock focus.