Every organisation is only able to dedicate a certain level of resource to the sustainment of its products. This resource must be divided between the need to provide new capabilities in the product and the need to provide continued service excellence. This is the need to balance the Rate of Delivery against the Quality of Service.

In organisations where development is separated from service operation, the balancing of delivery and service is highly problematic. Separation creates implicit competition. Development will often be under represented since, after a given product release the team that have built the product will often have been redeployed. In the short term an overspend on service is sustainable. But the failure to sustain the existing code base and to build new features will ensure that the product becomes uncompetitive.

A feedback loop is created because until new features are available product use will decline. But the organisation has no desire to invest in a failing product. The product becomes viewed as a legacy product whose only fate can be accelerating decline into decommissioning. This is a largely unrecognised pattern created by the separation of development and service but that has been observed many times.

In contrast organisations that take a product lifecycle view are far more likely to successfully sustain their products through maturity and into a controlled retirement.