What is the product lifecycle?
Launches get all the attention. But there is so much that happens before and after you release something new. A product evolves and changes based on market conditions, customer preferences, and technological advancements. The product lifecycle (sometimes abbreviated as PLC) refers to different stages of how a product evolves and performs over time. This lifecycle has six stages — development, introduction, growth, maturity, saturation, and decline — but more on this later.
The concept of a product lifecycle gained critical attention in 1965 when economist Theodore Levitt published an influential article titled "Exploit the Product Lifecycle" in the Harvard Business Review magazine. Levitt pointed out that although most business leaders were aware of the product lifecycle, few were incorporating it into strategic or even tactical decision-making. Levitt noted that decisions made today should consider the next stage ahead. His conclusion was that product strategy should include "some sort of plan for a timed sequence of conditional moves."
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Understanding the stages of the product lifecycle is essential for all product builders. Although product lifecycle is usually referenced in universal terms, the details are always situational. PLC at a multinational corporation with a large portfolio of products and many resources will look very different from a scrappy startup with a small team. (Unless, of course, that startup enjoys wild success and becomes a multinational corporation.)
PLC is especially important in software, where new products can be built quickly and innovation occurs at breakneck speed. Understanding the concepts as a whole is a useful way to identify overarching patterns and evaluate how your product strategies may shift over time.
This guide explores each stage of the product lifecycle in depth — so you can better understand your own product and use that knowledge to make sound decisions. Use the following links to jump ahead to a specific section:
