The Circle Of Life...Of A Product
Week 1: Problems, Opportunities, and Customers · Lesson 4 ·
In this lesson, we cover the lifecycle of products - how it develops, grows, and changes - so that you as a product manager know where you are and what you're working towards. It'll be way less awkward than 8th grade biology, we promise.
The Six Stages Of A Product's Lifecycle:
1. An idea - coming up with what a product might be, what your customers want or need.
2. Development - building the product.
3. Launch - actually putting the product out there so that people can encounter it.
4. Growth - once it's out in the world, you need to go from no one using your product to (hopefully) a bunch of people buying and using your product.
5. Maturity - When the product's growth plateaus and it's less new. Sales can tapper off, or use of it can stabilize, without new users.
6. Decline - When your customer base decrease/decline, with people not buying it.
The nice thing about this is, that unlike our own lifecycles, people have control over a product's lifecycle. You can choose to do something about decline - and as a product manager, it's part of your job to help change or manipulate the product lifecycle so that either it, or the company, is growing as much as possible.