Keep or Kill? A Simple Calculator and Checklist for Deciding the Fate of Internal Tools

Stop guessing: a fast, defensible method to decide whether to keep or kill an internal tools

Tool sprawl, hidden costs, and maintenance debt slow teams down. If your organization is like many in 2026, new AI features, subscription creep, and recent platform shutdowns (for example Meta ending Workrooms in early 2026) have accelerated scrutiny of internal tools. This article gives a lightweight, evidence-first calculator and a retirement checklist you can apply in a single afternoon to decide: keep, rework, or retire.

Why this matters now (2026 context)

Late 2025 and early 2026 saw two clear trends: rapid tool proliferation driven by AI feature launches, and a string of vendor contractions and product shutdowns that highlighted fragility in both commercial and internal stacks. Analysts and practitioners are shifting from acquisition-first to lifecycle-first thinking: every new tool needs a retirement path. The practical outcome? Teams now evaluate tools not only on feature lists but on utilization, incremental value, maintenance cost, and strategic fit. This template brings those factors together in one simple score so non-technical stakeholders can make defensible decisions.

Quick summary: the Keep or Kill evaluative model

Use four core inputs to compute a Decision Score (0-100):

• Utilization — how many people actively use the tool and how often
• Incremental value — measurable benefit the tool provides (time saved, revenue enabled, compliance avoided)
• Maintenance cost — direct and indirect ongoing costs (dev hours, hosting, integrations)
• Strategic fit — qualitative alignment with roadmap, compliance, and vendor risk

Normalize each input to a 0–100 scale, apply simple weights, and compute a weighted sum. Then apply thresholds to recommend Keep / Rework / Retire. Below you'll find the calculator logic, spreadsheet-ready formulas, two short case studies, and a practical retirement checklist you can use immediately.

How the calculator works (step-by-step)

Step 1 — Gather 10 minutes of facts

• Active users last 90 days (unique logins / active sessions)
• Average sessions per user per month
• Time saved per user per session (minutes) or incremental revenue per month
• Maintenance hours per month (development, support, ops)
• Annual hosting, licensing, and integration costs
• Strategic alignment rating (1-5)

Step 2 — Compute normalized metrics

Use these normalized formulae in your spreadsheet. Normalization maps raw numbers to 0–100 so different units are comparable.

1. Utilization (U) = min(100, (Active users / Target user base) * 100). If you don’t have a target, use relative thresholds: 0-10 users = 10, 11-50 = 30, 51-200 = 60, 201+ = 90.
2. Value per month (V$) = (Active users) * (sessions per user per month) * (time saved per session in hours) * (avg hourly value). Convert to monthly dollars.
3. Incremental value score (V) = min(100, (V$ / ReferenceValue) * 100). Pick ReferenceValue = monthly cost of comparable outsourced service or a conservatively high number such as $20,000 to keep scores realistic.
4. Maintenance cost per month (C$) = (dev hours per month * dev rate) + hosting + licenses + integration staffing.
5. Maintenance score (C) = max(0, 100 - min(100, (C$ / V$) * 100)). This makes cost penalize the score when costs approach or exceed benefits.
6. Strategic fit (S) = (Qualitative 1-5) mapped to 0, 25, 50, 75, 100 based on roadmap alignment, compliance, and vendor risk.

Step 3 — Weighted Decision Score

Choose weights that reflect your org priorities. A suggested default:

• Utilization: 25%
• Incremental value: 35%
• Maintenance cost: 25%
• Strategic fit: 15%

Decision Score = U*0.25 + V*0.35 + C*0.25 + S*0.15

Step 4 — Decision thresholds

• Score >= 65: Keep as-is or incrementally improve
• Score 45–64: Rework — reduce cost, consolidate, or add integrations
• Score < 45: Retire — schedule sunset and migrate data

Spreadsheet-ready formulas (Google Sheets / Excel)

Copy these formulas into a sheet where row 2 contains values for a single tool. Use column labels as shown.

• A2: ActiveUsers
• B2: SessionsPerUserPerMonth
• C2: MinutesSavedPerSession
• D2: AvgHourlyValue (dollars)
• E2: DevHoursPerMonth
• F2: DevRate (dollars per hour)
• G2: HostingLicensesPerMonth
• H2: TargetUserBase
• I2: StrategicRating (1-5)

Important formulas:

• Utilization (U): =MIN(100, (A2/H2)*100)
• ValueMonthly (V$): =(A2*B2*(C2/60)*D2)
• ValueScore (V): =MIN(100, ValueMonthly/20000*100) (replace 20000 to change reference)
• MaintenanceMonthly (C$): =(E2*F2)+G2
• CostScore (C): =MAX(0, 100 - MIN(100, (MaintenanceMonthly/ValueMonthly)*100))
• StrategicScore (S): =CHOOSE(I2,0,25,50,75,100)
• DecisionScore: =U*0.25 + V*0.35 + C*0.25 + S*0.15

Practical examples (two short case studies)

Case study A — Small finance automation (12 users)

Context: a finance team created a small internal tool that automates a three-step reconciliation. Facts:

• Active users: 12
• Sessions/user/month: 20
• Time saved per session: 8 minutes (0.133 hours)
• Avg hourly value: $60 (senior finance time)
• Dev hours/month: 8 (maintenance + small enhancements)
• Dev rate: $80/hr (internal loaded cost)
• Hosting/licenses: $120/month
• Strategic rating: 4

Compute:

1. V$ = 12 * 20 * 0.133 * 60 ≈ $1,920/month
2. Maintenance = 8*80 + 120 = $760/month
3. Cost ratio = 760/1920 = 0.396 → CostScore ≈ 100 - 39.6 = 60.4
4. Utilization: assuming H2 target = 15 → U = (12/15)*100 = 80
5. ValueScore: 1920/20000*100 = 9.6
6. StrategicScore: rating 4 → 75
7. DecisionScore = 80*0.25 + 9.6*0.35 + 60.4*0.25 + 75*0.15 ≈ 20 + 3.36 + 15.1 + 11.25 = 49.7

Recommendation: Rework. This tool clearly saves time but its incremental value is modest relative to a conservative reference. Options: centralize support to reduce dev hours (see tiny team support playbooks), improve onboarding to raise utilization, or fold features into a larger finance system.

Case study B — Compliance checklist tool (250 users)

Context: an internal compliance app used company-wide for vendor checks. Facts:

• Active users: 250
• Sessions/user/month: 2
• Time saved per session: 15 minutes (0.25 hours)
• Avg hourly value: $100 (compliance officers)
• Dev hours/month: 20
• Dev rate: $90/hr
• Hosting/licenses: $1,500/month
• Strategic rating: 5

Compute:

1. V$ = 250 * 2 * 0.25 * 100 = $12,500/month
2. Maintenance = 20*90 + 1500 = $3,300/month
3. Cost ratio = 3300/12500 = 0.264 → CostScore ≈ 73.6
4. Utilization: target user base = 300 → U = (250/300)*100 ≈ 83
5. ValueScore: 12500/20000*100 = 62.5
6. StrategicScore: 100 (rating 5)
7. DecisionScore = 83*0.25 + 62.5*0.35 + 73.6*0.25 + 100*0.15 ≈ 20.75 + 21.88 + 18.4 + 15 = 76.0

Recommendation: Keep and invest. High utilization, strong strategic fit, and material monthly value. Consider optimizing maintenance and formalizing handoff to product operations to ensure continued support — and evaluate your deployment choices for resilience (see resilient cloud-native architectures).

Retirement checklist: practical steps to kill a tool without chaos

Killing a tool is an operational activity, not an emotional one. Follow a checklist to avoid data loss and user frustration.

1. Stakeholder alignment: Document decision and secure sign-off from product owner, security, legal, and finance.
2. Communicate early: Announce retirement plan, timeline, and alternatives to affected users 30-60 days before sunset.
3. Data export: Provide CSV/JSON exports of user data, logs, and configuration. Note retention requirements for compliance — micro-app design patterns can simplify exports (see micro-app workflows).
4. Migration plan: Map features to replacement systems or manual processes. Estimate migration effort and owners.
5. Disable integrations: Remove automated integrations and API keys on a controlled schedule to prevent surprises. Consider using hosted worker platforms with clear retirement paths (Cloudflare Workers vs AWS Lambda) when appropriate.
6. Archive code: Move code to a read-only repo with documentation and runbook for future reference — include infrastructure and IaC templates where applicable.
7. Cutover and monitoring: Decommission in stages; monitor user support channels and rollback if critical issues appear.
8. Finalize closure: Remove hosting, revoke credentials, and update inventory and TCO records.

Tip: treating retirement like a feature launch—complete with release notes, runbooks, and post-mortems—reduces friction and builds trust.

TCO and decision support: more than just monthly cost

TCO should include:

• Direct costs: hosting, licenses, third-party fees
• Labor costs: development, support, integrations, onboarding
• Opportunity costs: delays caused by tool complexity, duplicated data work
• Risk costs: compliance exposures, vendor shutdown probability (e.g., how Meta’s Workrooms shutdown affected customers in early 2026)

Annual TCO = 12 * MaintenanceMonthly + (InitialBuildCost / UsefulLifeYears). Use a simple NPV if you expect future growth or savings. For decision support when comparing two options (keep vs. integrate vs. buy), present a side-by-side TCO with qualitative risks and recommended mitigation actions. Also evaluate long-term resilience and consolidation strategy — favor platforms that make consolidation easy (see edge-first and extensible platform approaches).

Advanced strategies and 2026 trends to apply

• Consolidation over novelty: In 2026 many orgs are consolidating platforms and preferring extensible tools rather than adding point solutions. Prioritize tools that support safe extensions and well-documented APIs.
• ‘Right to Retire’ policy: Implement a lifecycle policy that forces annual review of internal tools using a standardized template like this one.
• AI feature risk: New AI-powered features introduced since 2024 often create shadow complexity. When scoring strategic fit, add an AI-risk subscore (data quality, hallucination risk, auditability). For AI risk and compliance, review approaches for running LLMs on compliant infrastructure and when to gate autonomous behavior (autonomous agents guidance).
• Cost transparency: Require teams to log time spent supporting tools and include that as part of maintenance cost. Culture change: stop treating internal dev as 'free'.

How to embed and document this calculator in your workflow

Quick deployment options:

1. Create a Google Sheet using the formulas above and share a template across the organization. Use protected cells for calculation logic.
2. Build a lightweight web calculator (HTML + JavaScript) and embed it in your internal wiki. Export results as CSV for auditing — if you need hosting and simple deployment patterns, check a low-cost tech stack for small web tools.
3. Integrate into your product backlog pipeline: require a Decision Score when a tool passes from prototype to production. If your pipeline uses automated verification, combine the calculator with IaC and verification templates.

Documentation matters: include examples, a short video walkthrough, and a one-page runbook for how to collect the 10-minute facts. That ensures consistent inputs and defensible outcomes.

Common objections and how to address them

• "Numbers are rough": Use conservative estimates; the model is designed to be robust to approximation. Sensitivity testing (change dev hours by +/- 25%) helps identify fragile decisions.
• "It's a strategic tool; you can't retire it": Apply the strategic fit score honestly. If strategic value is real, document the roadmap and owner commitment to fund maintenance.
• "Users will revolt": Communicate alternatives early, provide exports and a clear timeline, and give power users a migration slot to replicate workflows.

Final checklist before making a decision

1. Complete the calculator and document all inputs.
2. Review Decision Score with stakeholders and show TCO comparison.
3. Perform a 30-day pilot of proposed action (keep, rework, or retire) when feasible.
4. Publish an outcomes report with measurable targets (cost saved, hours reduced) and re-evaluate in 6 months.

Closing: act now, reduce debt later

Tool sprawl and maintenance debt are quietly eating productivity. A lightweight, repeatable evaluative template that combines utilization, incremental value, maintenance cost, and strategic fit lets teams make defensible choices fast. Use the calculator above to score tools in one afternoon. If you adopt a 'right to retire' policy and publish your decisions transparently, you will reduce cost, increase clarity, and free engineering time for higher-impact work.

Takeaway actions:

• Run the calculator on your top 10 internal tools this quarter.
• Create a retirement runbook and assign an owner for each candidate.
• Institutionalize annual reviews using this template so tool decisions are pro-active, not reactive.

Call to action

Download the free Google Sheets template and a one-page retirement checklist at calculation.shop/keep-or-kill to run your first audit today. If you want a guided workshop (30–90 minutes) to evaluate your top tools and create a consolidation plan, contact our team for a tailored session.

Related Reading

• Running Large Language Models on Compliant Infrastructure: SLA, Auditing & Cost Considerations
• Beyond Serverless: Designing Resilient Cloud‑Native Architectures for 2026
• How Micro-Apps Are Reshaping Small Business Document Workflows in 2026
• IaC templates for automated software verification
• Low‑Cost Tech Stack for Pop‑Ups and Micro‑Events: Tools & Workflows
• Printable Zelda: Ocarina of Time Final Battle Coloring Pages for Kids
• Real Estate Interview Case Study: Valuing a $1.8M Home — What Interns Should Know
• Inside ClickHouse’s Growth: What the $400M Raise Means for Remote Hiring & Compensation
• Yoga & Sleep: Create a Bedtime Podcast Series That Doubles as a Guided Practice
• Launch a Fitness Podcast Like a Pro: Lessons from Ant & Dec’s Move Into Audio