How do you write a post-mortem for a dead product?

Take 20 minutes, the week the product dies, while it still stings, and fill in one card. Don't wait until you feel better about it. The version written 6 months later is a story about yourself, and it's much less useful.

The card

Every line, every time:

• What it was. One sentence. What it did, never what it was going to become.
• Who it was for. A group you could find, or an admission that it was a word.
• How long it took to build. In days or weeks, honestly.
• How long it lived. From launch to the day you switched it off, or stopped looking at it, whichever came first.
• What happened. 4 to 6 moments, each with its month: launch day, the first payment if there was one, the moment you knew, the day it ended.
• What actually killed it. One sentence. What killed it, as against what you told people.
• The rule it leaves you. One sentence you'd want in front of you when you start the next thing.
• When you'd drop the rule. The specific thing that would have to happen for you to stop believing it.

The autopsy card is a printable version.

3 questions that keep it honest

Would I say "what actually killed it" out loud to somebody who was there? If not, rewrite it until I would.

Is the rule something I'll actually do next time, or something I wish I were the kind of person to do? Only the first kind belongs on the card.

Have I written a number anywhere I'd be embarrassed to see published? Then I've written the useful version.

Keep them together

Put every card in one folder called graveyard, and read the whole folder before you start the next thing. Mine has 25 files in it. Reading them in one sitting took about 2 hours, and showed me the same 5 or 6 mistakes in slightly different clothes. One card is an anecdote. 25 are a pattern.

Nobody Bought It is that folder, opened. The graveyard has every card.