Product Adoption

Move people from aware to active, from active to habitual, and from habitual to evangelical — across consumer, B2B, internal-tool, and public-service contexts. This skill diagnoses adoption problems and designs adoption plans anchored in evidence rather than marketing assumptions.

When to Load

Trigger	What's Needed
Diagnose low activation or time-to-value	references/adoption-lifecycle-concepts.md
Design an adoption or rollout plan	templates/adoption-plan.md
Diagnose a specific adoption problem	templates/activation-time-to-value-diagnostic.md
Segment users into rollout cohorts	templates/segmentation-and-rollout-record.md
Review sustained use after launch	templates/sustained-use-review.md
Handle non-SaaS contexts	references/non-saas-adoption-contexts.md
Design behavior change or education	references/behavior-change-and-education.md

When Not to Use

This skill does not own:

• Acquisition campaigns, paid marketing, or conversion funnel optimization — these belong to go-to-market (see ../go-to-market/SKILL.md).
• Product-analytics instrumentation — belongs to product-analytics-and-measurement (prose reference only; skill not yet landed).
• Customer-success account management, renewal management, or health scoring — belongs to conditional-customer-success (prose reference only; skill not yet landed).

File Map

File	Purpose	Load when
references/discovery-brief.md	Maps existing GTM/acquisition material, states ownership boundaries	Required context
references/adoption-lifecycle-concepts.md	Distinguishes acquisition, activation, adoption, retention, expansion	Diagnosing stage confusion
references/non-saas-adoption-contexts.md	Internal-tool, public-service, consumer, and B2B patterns	Non-SaaS product
references/behavior-change-and-education.md	Behavior-change frameworks, in-product education, accessibility-first adoption	Designing onboarding, education
templates/adoption-plan.md	End-to-end adoption plan with evidence gates	Planning a launch
templates/activation-time-to-value-diagnostic.md	Structured activation diagnostic	Low activation signal
templates/segmentation-and-rollout-record.md	Cohort segmentation with evidence decision points	Rolling out to cohorts
templates/sustained-use-review.md	Post-launch adoption review	Evaluating adoption health

Core Methodology

The Adoption Pipeline (Five Distinct Stages)

ACQUISITION → ACTIVATION → ADOPTION → RETENTION → EXPANSION

Stage	Definition	Owned by	This skill's role
Acquisition	User arrives at the product	go-to-market	Does NOT own. Consumes context.
Activation	User completes first meaningful outcome ("aha moment")	product-adoption	Owns.
Adoption	User forms a habit; product becomes regular workflow	product-adoption	Owns.
Retention	User stays and returns over time	Shared with product-lifecycle-learning	Consumes retention signals.
Expansion	User deepens engagement	product-adoption (feature-discovery) + conditional-customer-success (account-side)	Owns feature-discovery.

Evidence-Based Decision Points

Decision	Evidence Signal	Rule
Proceed	Activation rate >= threshold, all cohorts	Green-light expansion
Pause	Activation rate < threshold in any cohort, or negative trend	Halt, diagnose, narrow
Stop	Sustained below-threshold, 2+ remediation attempts failed	Stop, route to lifecycle-learning
Accelerate	Activation > 2x threshold, sustained 2+ cycles	Increase cohort size
Redesign onboarding	Drop-off > 50% in first-run or TTV > 2x target	Redesign, re-test small cohort

Non-SaaS Support

Explicitly supports: internal tools, public services, consumer (non-subscription), B2B (non-SaaS). Does not assume NPS, conversion rates, or MRR benchmarks are universal. See references/non-saas-adoption-contexts.md.

Connecting Adoption Evidence

• Product analytics and measurement — Consumes adoption evidence. product-analytics-and-measurement (prose) defines instrumentation.
• Customer success — Informs success playbooks. conditional-customer-success (prose) owns account-level response.
• Lifecycle learning — Sustained-use reviews feed product-lifecycle-learning (prose).
• Product roadmapping and portfolio — Pause/stop decisions feed product-roadmapping-and-portfolio (prose).

Output Contract

1. Completed diagnostic or plan from relevant template
2. Evidence-gate decisions with cohort breakdowns
3. Explicit statement of which adoption stage(s) in scope and delegated

Related Skills

• ../go-to-market/SKILL.md — Owns acquisition, PLG metrics.
• product-analytics-and-measurement — Owns instrumentation (prose reference).
• conditional-customer-success — Owns account-level intervention (prose reference).
• product-lifecycle-learning — Receives sustained-use review records (prose reference).
• product-roadmapping-and-portfolio — Receives pause/stop evidence (prose reference).