We have deliberately used the common expression “product life cycle management” and its usual representation as found in almost all marketing literature. Any actor or manager of a technology company will immediately react to this with two remarks:
- First of all, it is not a question of “managing” a single product but several or a large, even very large number of products at the same time, so we should talk about product life cycle management.
- Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, in technology, the product life cycle begins well before the product is launched on the market, with an internal phase whose stages are just as important as those of the “business life cycle” because of the investments, the timeframes and the technical and economic risks that they present.
Here is the landscape of “product life cycle management” in the B2B/B2G high-tech company: how to “manage” (we will be forgiven for using the English verb so commonly used wrongly because we manage people and not processes) multiple products, organised in product lines and sharing common technical elements, when these products are characterised by a high degree of innovation, a long development time, significant development costs sometimes partially financed by customers, technical and economic risks and when these products, if they succeed in their commercial launch, are destined to live for a long time on their market.
