Understanding the Product Management Lifecycle

The product management lifecycle is the journey a product takes from conception to retirement. It includes but is not limited to the following stages, discovery, design, development, launch, maturity, and decline. As a Product Manager, understanding this lifecycle allows you to effectively guide your product through each stage, making strategic decisions based on its current lifecycle stage, and ensuring that it meets customer needs and business goals at each stage.

Example

Consider a team communication platform, like Slack or Teams. The lifecycle might begin with a problem they’ve identified, such as users complaining about file sharing. As the PM who runs messaging, you own the neglected file-sharing feature.

You work to define the requirements by asking for input from various departments across the organization and work extra closely with your manager, design manager, and engineering manager to get a first draft. The requirements are later shared with the broader company and leadership for approval and alignment.

After requirements are defined, the next major stage is product design, where key features like a file-sharing UI (user interface) are designed, getting sign-off from key stakeholders and leadership. This stage is the first chance to visualize the feature and typically comes with new assumptions and questions.

The engineering team then takes over; the PM builds out the projects while the engineering manager outlines the engineering tasks from the requirements. The PM aids the eng teams as they build the first version.

During the launch stage, product marketing, customer support, legal, and other business teams are deeply involved to ensure everything goes smoothly. It’s considered good practice, especially with larger user bases, to launch the product to a limited set of users to validate the feature’s hypothesis, increasing the number of users with validation over time.

The maturity phase focuses on expanding the functionality, integrating with other platforms, and optimizing features. During this phase the PM continuously oversees improvements based on user feedback and analysis of usage data.

Eventually, the PM must navigate the product's decline, assessing when to innovate, pivot, or retire certain aspects to maintain relevance and user satisfaction.

Pain Points

The product management lifecycle involves many moving parts and requires balancing various stakeholder needs, timelines, and resources. Deciding when to move from one stage to the next can be challenging, especially when retiring or pivoting a product.

Practical Exercise

Map out the lifecycle of a product you use regularly. What stages did it go through?

Related Research Topics

• Product lifecycle stages [ Google | Perplexity ]

• Strategic decision-making in product management [ Google | Perplexity ]

• Development lifecycle [ Google | Perplexity ]