Sample Product Life Cycle

Product management can exist in different forms, including but not limited to:

• Program management within a product life cycle. This approach incorporates related projects, subsidiary programs, and program activities. For very large or long-running products, one or more product life cycle phases may be sufficiently complex to merit a set of programs and projects working together.
• Project management within a product life cycle. This approach oversees development and maturing of product capabilities as an ongoing business activity. Portfolio governance charters individual projects as needed to perform enhancements and improvements or to produce other unique outcomes.
• Product management within a program. This approach applies the full product life cycle within the purview and boundaries of a given program. A series of subsidiary programs or projects will be chartered to achieve specific benefits for a product. Those benefits can be enhanced by applying product management competencies like competitive analysis, customer acquisition, and customer advocacy.

While product management is a separate discipline with its own body of knowledge, it represents a key integration point within the program management and project management disciplines. Programs and projects with deliverables that include products use a tailored and integrated approach that incorporates all of the relevant bodies of knowledge and their related practices, methods, and artifacts.