- "Do I Know This Already?" Quiz
- Fundamentals of the Project Life Cycle
- Project Life Cycle vs. Product Life Cycle
- Development Approach and Life Cycle Performance Domain Concepts
- Life Cycles in Practice
- Considerations for Selecting a Development Approach
- Project Activity, Deliverables, and Milestones
- Summary
- Exam Preparation Tasks
- Review All Key Topics
- Define Key Terms
- Suggested Reading and Resources
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Project Life Cycle vs. Product Life Cycle
The Standard for Project Management defines a product as an artifact that is produced, is quantifiable, and is either an end item or a component item. A product life cycle begins when a product is conceived and development is started. It is then introduced to the market. This is followed by a growth in sales, a sales peak, and often a gradual decline, after which the product is typically withdrawn from the market. At this point, a new version or a new product concept takes its place in another product cycle. Figure 4-6 illustrates a typical product life cycle. After development, a product typically goes through the introduction, growth, maturity, and decline phases.
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Figure 4-6 Product Management Life Cycle
Profits follow a different curve. There is an early investment when the product is in development, so profits do not accrue instantly with the first sales; they are offset in time until the product has been in the marketplace long enough to have paid back the investments of development and for sales to have scaled up sufficiently for the product to become profitable. If the product is successful, there is a reasonable period of profitability during the product’s maturity stage. Inevitably, product yields decline in sales or interest and are superseded by newer or better product versions, or they are withdrawn from the marketplace.
Consider the case of a smartphone. After Release 1, a newer product version emerges as Release 2. If you consider each release as a project, you have multiple projects, as illustrated in Figure 4-6.