Project Life Cycle Vs. Product Life Cycle

Marketing can impact how your product is marketed, but there's still a huge difference between marketing and promotion. However, understanding the project life cycle and product life cycle and having some strategies for their use will help you integrate both into your business plans with maximum effectiveness.

Product Life Cycle

A product's life cycle might be represented by five stages: Development, Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline. In the beginning, there were no sales yet. After people try the product and are receptive to it, there will begin to be some sales during the growth phase. Eventually, as sales decline, the competition comes and beats their performance. There is no set period for any of these stages: The company could very well stay in development for a long time before ever introducing a new product into the market, or the lifespan of one household appliance could be centuries, all depending on how often it gets used.

Project Life Cycle

Project life cycles are a critical aspect of project management. They serve as an overview of what happens during every project stage and help ensure that everything is accounted for from beginning to end. The project life cycle usually has four phases: initiate, plan, execute, and close.

When it comes to planning and executing a project, the team consists of individuals who research solution ideas and create a plan, timeline, and milestones to complete any project. They then adapt and adjust as necessary to ensure the project's success.

In the post-close phase, the final details are wrapped up and final reports are delivered to the appropriate parties.

Product Life Cycle vs Project Life Cycle: Major Differences

The product life cycle is a conceptual model of a product’s sales, but it does give any information on what to do with the product. When a company believes its product is entering the decline phase, it might create a plan for rejuvenating or ceasing production of that product.

A product's life cycle may have one or more projects, while a project's life cycle is shorter and has an endpoint. In addition, the product life cycle phases overlap and phases are generally only seen once during that time while within the project life cycle they can repeat.

Product and Project Life Cycle Phases

The project life cycle has 5 main stages −

• Initiate

• Plan

• Execute

• Control

• Close

There are many different phases involved in project planning, but all have a similar goal to achieve. Every phase has its characteristics and may require using different aspects of the process at varying degrees, depending on the specific requirements. A project tracked under the same organization may have very similar phases, with only minor subtleties.

Similarly, the product life cycle has also five stages −

• Develop

• Introduce

• Grow

• Mature

• Decline

The corporate generates the thought to make a new product and then begins to create it. Once it's created, the company then starts to introduce it by marketing it. This process is repeated with market expansion into potential customers until enough sales commence and profits accrue.

Examples of Product and Project Life Cycle

Project Life Cycle

Projects have milestones and stages, but the final project can't be fully achieved without a successful closure. Assume you are starting a project to create new software. First, you'll identify the key stakeholder groups involved in the project. Then you'll develop your project management plan. Next, each coding phase will progress with starts and stops as necessary, usually until customers and developers find peace with the software.

Product Life Cycle

Now that you have a product, it's time to think about marketing. Before you launch, it's important to first identify your competitors and the market potential of your product. Once you've identified those things, you'll be much better off understanding what kind of profit you can make. As your product grows in demand, your profits will go down accordingly.

Analysis and Effective Strategies

There are limitations to the merchandise life cycle concept. It is a common notion for every product to have a smooth bell curve from the beginning to its maturity phase. A product may appear to be in decline and luxuriate as a result of another company leaving the market or an effective revitalization strategy.

When it comes to project life cycle management, things can seem pretty straightforward, but keep in mind that this may not always be the case. It's vital to vividly distinguish the stages of a product life cycle for stakeholders to understand when is the time to jump from one step to another.

PLC Analysis

A PLC analysis is often performed to see if your products are favored by the market. Analyzing many parameters can help companies better understand where they stand and how they need to make changes to be successful. PLC Analysis offers a general overview of a company’s status and how it should develop its products considering the demand.

PLC Strategies

Let's take a look at product life cycle strategies. Companies develop various strategies, such as price skimming and price penetration, to extend awareness and sales on time. If they don't identify the performance of their products correctly during the introduction stage, they're going to face many problems. Product Life Cycle Analysis helps companies reach their goals by assessing how well their products are performing in the market.

PLC Management

Before developing a new piece of merchandise, a company needs to think about various business areas or fields and form the highly-anticipated product into an unmissable hit. The following are the specialized management fields required to be taken care of. Right from the launch of the merchandise to its decline in popularity.

Manufacturing − The production value varies throughout a product's life cycle. At the event stage, it isvery high because the product is new, whereas, at the expansion and maturity stages of a product'slife, it becomes less expensive.

Marketing − When the product is being introduced, it may require a lot of publicity and marketing to get people interested. Once it has been around for a while, you'll need a different strategy to promote it.

Financing − Do you see an increase in capital requirement at the introduction stage of a product? Whereas the expansion and maturity stage has a self-sustainable model where merchandise earns money from sales and profits.

Development − When a product is in development, research and analysis are crucial for getting it out to the market as quickly as possible. It's also important to invest in developing a suitable replacement product so that any changes or updates can be implemented with ease as well. This ensures tha your company is set up for future success rather than failure.

Information − Data is a crucial component of management that isn't always easy to come by. Information gathering and analysis are vital to successful management and decision-making.

Conclusion

The project life cycle typically starts from the point where an idea has been thought up and ends when the merchandise is retired. The product life cycle depends on the merch sales. A product journey includes the whole lifetime of the merchandise including updates and upgrades, but products can be upgraded with the help of a project.

Some processes or projects go through different stages of development - some more than others. The merchandise Life Cycle focuses on the product and doesn't change when supporting a particular type of product (ie. where you're selling it). There is also the Start-to-End Project Life Cycle, which asks for different concepts but is associated with one another.