5 Stages Of The Product Lifecycle And Why It’s Important

One of the main job of a product manager is to maintain the product life cycle. The act of maintaining is to ensure that the cycle continues and not get stuck. So the best way to keep the cycle going is to know all the steps of the product lifecycle. This way, you always know which steps you are in and what steps to take next and continue to deliver the best products for your users.

What is the Product Lifecycle?

Like its name, the product lifecycle depicts the different stages that a product goes through. Something as big as a whole product line or as small as a product feature can go through its own cycle. There are different depictions of the stages of a product lifecycle, but I find the one in the diagram above as the easiest to understand. It draws a parallel to a human’s lifecycle, starting from the point of conception, to its retirement. For this depiction of the product lifecycle, there are five stages:

• Stage 0: Research and Opportunity Discovery (Conceive)
• Stage 1: Introduction to Market (The Birth)
• Stage 2: Growth Stage (Puberty and Growing Up)
• Stage 3: Market Maturity (Adulting)
• Stage 4: Decline (Retirement)

Product Lifecycle Stage 0: Research and Opportunity Discovery (Conceive)

Before the start of the cycle, there needs to be a point of conception. At stage 0, the goal is to create a hypothesis, decide a solution to build, and actually build it.

This stage involves a lot of research, from getting to know the market, the users, potential needs, and opportunities. The output of the research should be a solid hypothesis. Next, get the team together and do some brainstorming. Many start ups will use a Design Sprint as an ideation framework. Make sure to define and build the MVP first for the solution you choose, keep it simple. At this point, you don’t know if the hypothesis if correct, so this MVP will be a quick way to get your product to market and test it.

Product Lifecycle Stage 1: Introduction to Market (The Birth)

Things will start to get exciting at stage 1, time for your MVP baby to be born and introduced to the market. The goal for your new born baby is to validate your hypothesis and find your product market fit/demand. Let your baby wonder and discover this new world they’ve just been born into.

This stage involves closely monitoring the progression of your baby. It’s normal that the adoption is slow, this is where you can find your early adopters of the product. At this point, you should be able to gauge whether there needs to be adjustments or not to fit the market. It might be beneficial to engage with the early adopters to get further insights, should your baby pivot? what should I improve next?

These initial feedbacks will become the game plan for your product iteration. Nurture your baby and implement your necessary iterations so that they can be introduced to a bigger market. Prioritize the next steps based on the highest impact and lowest effort (i.e. low hanging fruits/quick wins).

Product Lifecycle Stage 2: Growth Stage (Puberty and Growing Up)

From the previous stage, your product should be ready to start joining the society (i.e. going to school). The goal of stage 2 is to expand the demand beyond the early adopters and to the mainstream market.

Your product is no longer in its MVP form, so it should be more acceptable to market. This stage usually involves product marketing and spreading awareness to your product and its values. If your iterations are implemented correctly, you should see demand beginning to take off. Note that behaviors of the mass market might differ from the early adopters. So while you don’t need to monitor progress as close as in stage 1, you should still keep an eye on how the mass users respond to your product.

As your product grows its users, you should be able to better segment the users. Analyze the performance of your product, and try to also talk to newer users to get a more diversified insight. Be mindful of the new user segments when planning for the next iteration. Ask questions like: how are you going to satisfy all the users needs? Which users might be a better priority than the others? Like in high school, your product is hanging out with different cliques to find where they belong, and a friend to all is a friend to none. Find your core users, find your people.

Product Lifecycle Stage 3: Market Maturity (Adulting)

After your product have gone through several iterations and have stayed in the market a while, the growth will slow down and stabilize. At this point, the users that are just “trying out” your product would have left, and you will be left with your core users. The maturity stage lets you focus on implementing nice to have improvements that will further enhance your core user experience. Like adults, the goal is to build lasting relations that we can grow old with for the rest of our life. Although getting new users will be nice, always remember who your core users are, and focus on making them happier than yesterday.

Product Lifecycle Stage 4: Decline (Retirement)

The final step, the decline/retirement stage. All things have to come to an end to make room for new things. Although it might be hard, a good product manager does not fixate on the survival of their product, but is able adapt to the changing user and market needs. Especially through this pandemic, we know first hand that our needs can change, and if your product no longer serves any purpose, then it might be time to retire it.

Retirement of a product doesn’t necessarily mean killing it off, although sometimes it might. Retirement might also look like revamps, rebranding, or merging with other products. But the goal of this step if to take a step back and bring our focus back to stage 0. Ask yourself: How can I breathe new life into the product and serve the current needs of the users? And the cycle starts up again and continues.

So which stage is your product in? And what can you do to bring it to the next?