Managing the life cycle of a product in isolation means making successive decisions throughout its life, whether this life is within the company (from the idea to the commercial launch), or outside, from its commercial launch to the end of its life and that of the associated services (what is sometimes called the product’s business life cycle). These decisions will be marked out by periodic “reviews”, generally called stage-gates but which may have different names depending on the company. These reviews will validate and secure each of the major stages in the life of the product in the form of successive “go-no-go” events. These reviews will essentially secure each of the stages from a technical and economic point of view and give the green light or not to move on to the next stage. Depending on the company’s business, the possible risks and the necessary investments, there may be more or less of them and they may be positioned at different times in the “life of the product”, which can range from a few weeks to many years.

A company does not manage a single product but several, sometimes dozens or hundreds, grouped into different product lines. It will therefore be necessary to manage each of these entities simultaneously over time while ensuring that the whole is balanced in terms of timing, risks, available technical or industrial resources, necessary investments, etc.

These are the challenges of product life cycle management. They are particularly important in technology because of the length of the life cycles, the size of the investments to be made (particularly in development), and the importance of the risks incurred in the event of technical or commercial failure.

This section explores and illustrates the different aspects of product cycle management.