Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) in a Nutshell
This post was written by MEST Alumni and Co-Founder of Saada, Ulrich Mabou.
In my previous article, we briefly touched on the roles and responsibilities of a Product Manager (PM), and we attempted to clarify the main differences between product management, project management, and product marketing.
As pointed out, PMs are primarily responsible for ideation, features prioritization, strategy, releases and go-to-market, with the ultimate goal of delivering a product customers love. One of the concepts a new PM needs to get a good grasp of is Product Life-cycle Management.
What is product life-cycle management?
From an engineering angle, product life-cycle management could be described as the process of managing the entire life-cycle of a product from inception, through engineering design and manufacture, to service and disposal of manufactured products.
Looking from a marketing standpoint, we could also describe it as the succession of strategies by business management as a product goes through its life-cycle. This is sometimes referred to as product lifecycle management (marketing) or PLCM.
In the context of this article, PLM interchangeably refers to both. For digital/software products like the ones Saada is working on, PLM integrates people, market, opportunities, engineering, marketing, data, processes, and business systems. We could essentially say that the five steps listed below are those of a digital product life-cycle management.
Phases of product life-cycle management
The life-cycle of a digital product can be broken down into five phases:
- New Product Identification
- New Product Definition
- Product Development
- Product Launch and Growth
- Product Discontinuation
New product identification
During the first phase, a PM or a team conducts various activities to understand customer needs and desires. Some of those activities may include speaking to potential customers, conducting online research, conducting and reviewing customer surveys, etc. A good PM should read industry journals, magazines, and blogs during that phase. He/she should also attend conferences and relevant events to better understand the trends and innovations happening around the ecosystem.
The team will have a discussion about ideas for new products; and at the end of this phase, a shortlist of product ideas and features should be generated for further discussions.
New product definition
During the product definition phase, the team will evaluate and select the favourite product ideas, and hopefully settle down on one or a few. This is when the higher level specifications of the product are outlined. These are stated so that everybody in the team understand what functions the product has to do to solve the customer problems. Depending on the team or idea, it could be some of sort of business requirement document, some wiframes, mockups, or just a bulleted list of requirements.
This is also the phase where the PM or the team will need to develop a business case for the product. It should include at least a problem statement, and a recommendation that summarizes the approach to how the product will address the customer problems, a cost-benefit analysis and financial projections. In the business case, you also want to include a product description, some assumptions and dependencies.
Product Development
Once the team has determined that a product is viable and has decided to go on with the idea, the next phase is product development. This is when the PM involves the product development team; this team can consist of people from engineering, design, sales, implementation, and support. They are given high-level specifications of the product, and the goal is to actually build the product.
During this phase, engineering will create detailed specifications with input of feedback from other functions. When the specification documents are signed off, engineering will go on to build the first iteration of the product. A PM will then have to ensure that the product meets the original requirements. He/she may also need to get the prototype or product into some customers’ hands for testing and feedback. Based on the test results and the feedback received, the PM and the team have to decide if changes are needed on the product before launch.
Product Launch and Growth
When all the stakeholders are happy with the product at that stage, the development is frozen and everybody gets prepared for product launch. At this point, you might want to conduct some test marketing with a small portion of your market so that the actual user experience is captured, and the impact is measured.
When the product launch phase starts, the team should know how they have positioned the product, and who is their target customer segment. Along with marketing, a PM has to develop a campaign to launch the product. In sales, channel partners and customer service must know what the product is, what they are selling, and how the product compares to the competition. The customers must be able to understand the product they are buying; a good PM should develop tools and documentation needed by the sales team, channel partners, and customer service to sell and support the product effectively. Some PMs could also prepare communications for clients, as well as a bunch of relevant communications to internal stakeholders.
A PM continues to provide support to the product throughout its life-cycle by determining ways to improve sales, profitability, and the product itself. In many instances, the team has build features that haven’t been released at launch. Those features and many more identified from further research and feedback are progressively added to the product. This is essential to stay ahead of the competition and keep the customers interested in the product.
Product Discontinuation
A good PM should ensure that the team is keeping track of the feedback from customers so that small incremental improvements can be made to the product to increase its lifecycle and profitability. At some points, however, product sales might decrease due to changing customer requirements, and the team might need to start thinking about a pivot or discontinuation. This is often a difficult decision to make, and as you probably know, a lot of startups, and even established companies go through that phase. For example, check out this graveyard of products killed by Google; you might recognize a few that you have used in the past, perhaps even very recently!
I have recently taken on a new role as a PM at Saada, a startup that is using the power of conversational interfaces and mobile money to revolutionize the ticket purchasing process for both businesses and consumers. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or chat me up on Twitter.
