Hi Nancy,

From common sense, non-ITAM perspective, it would seem counterintuitive to have multiple substates of a state that is "Retired".  But when you break down the Disposal process into multiple workflows that are not necessarily in a logical order, the substate themselves become very important to track the final disposal of an asset from when you are first removing it from being "In Use".

One such example, you have provided, is the harvesting of software licenses from machines that are going into Retired and are not going back out to being re-"In Use" because either their lifecycle has ended from a manufacturer perspective (EOL/EOS) or the firm has decided not to use that make/model any longer.  In this example, you want the software harvested off the drive before destruction. 

You can go with Retired-Pending Disposal or create a specific substate (always create substates {within reason}, never states - that will keep workflow, business rules and sanity to the instance).  So the In Use device can state change to Retired-Pending SW Harvest (the new substate) and then a team could remove the software licenses based on a whitelist of costly or any cost software determined by the SAM Manager.  The final task would be to change the state-substate from Retired-Pending SW Harvest to Pending Disposal.  Then once the disposal company disposed of the systems and sends the updated file with the certificate, you can import those records which can change the state to Retired-Disposed. 

So, in that example, 3 Retired substates track 3 different workflow tasks/activities while maintaining overall governance of the drive, specifically, the drive's data, which is why all this matters in the end.