Why Every Tech Road Map Needs A Sunsetting Plan
Rohit Ayyagari is Vice President of Enterprise Technology at Sunrun.
In technology, the spotlight always shines on innovation. Product launches, new generative AI integrations and fresh user experiences dominate the road map. But while we chase the next big thing, we rarely stop to ask what we are ready to retire.
Without a clear plan to sunset aging systems, companies end up with more than just tech debt. They carry active liabilities. These legacy tools quietly drain budgets, introduce risk and slow down the teams meant to push the business forward.
The Hidden Cost Of Hanging On
Old systems have staying power. APIs no one remembers, internal tools built for a different era, platforms that only one person knows how to maintain—they hang on because no one owns their removal.
Legacy systems, outdated APIs and forgotten microservices linger in the shadows, soaking up budget, adding security risk and slowing down engineering teams.
They aren’t just artifacts of the past; they’re active liabilities. Keeping these systems alive takes work: patching vulnerabilities, auditing compliance, supporting break/fix cycles and training new developers to understand outdated codebases. They also struggle to keep up with modern security protocols.
Most of all, they pull engineers away from high-impact projects. They are why your newest features take longer to build, why onboarding is harder and why incident counts keep creeping up. Cutting them out is not optional. It is strategic.
Without a structured sunset plan, your road map is more like a hoarder’s house: new things layered over old, with a foundation that can no longer support innovation.
Treat Sunsetting As Important As A Launch
Sunsetting legacy technology is not about cleaning house. It is strategic portfolio management. It deserves the same structure and attention as any other point on your product road map. Just as companies prioritize what to build, they must be equally intentional about what to retire. But unlike launching new features, shutting down technology requires diplomacy, coordination and courage.
One thing I always tell my teams: Treat the sunset like a launch. It needs a timeline, a leader and a clear path to success. It means aligning stakeholders, retraining users, migrating data, rewriting dependencies and often weathering some backlash. Which is why it must be planned, not punted.
To institutionalize sunsetting as part of your road map, follow a structured approach, such as my my 5-Step Tech Pruning Framework:
1. Identify candidates. Use telemetry, customer feedback and cost metrics to find low-value or high-risk systems and features.
2. Assess dependencies and risk. Map the blast radius. What breaks if this goes away? Who relies on it (users, partners or internal processes)?
3. Develop a decommission plan. Set clear milestones. Freeze development, notify users, provide alternatives, migrate data and fully cease supporting or recommending usage. .
4. Communicate and execute. Treat it like a product launch. Publish documentation, train users and monitor impacts.
5. Measure gains. Track cost savings, security posture improvements and reclaimed engineering hours.
Too often, organizations skip measurement. But impact matters. Proving the value of one sunset builds momentum for the next. Last year, our team led a cross-functional initiative to sunset a homegrown API gateway built nearly a decade ago. It had become a bottleneck—every new service had to shim through an outdated architecture. We launched “Project Eclipse,” a phased effort to migrate over 200 endpoints to a new, cloud-native gateway with zero downtime.
The result: 40% reduction in API latency, simplified authentication with OAuth2, decommissioned 12 legacy EC2 instances and eliminated a whole class of support tickets. Most importantly, it gave our developers the freedom to move faster.
That experience taught me this: Decommissioning can create as much business value as building something new. But only if you give it the same rigor.
Technology Is Also A People System
Letting go of a system means asking people to change how they work. That is why sunset planning is as much about empathy as it is about code.
Start with early stakeholder engagement. Explain why the change matters and what it enables. Offer retraining. Build safe environments for testing new tools. And assign accountability for the transition.
When a sunsetting project goes well, celebrate it. Make that part of your culture.
Letting go is not flashy, but the most forward-thinking tech leaders don’t just ask, “What should we build?” They also ask, “What no longer serves us?” In a world where security, simplicity and speed matter more than ever, knowing what to stop supporting is as valuable as innovation.
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