What is the life cycle of product development?

YEREVAN, Armenia - Jan. 12, 2023 - PRLog -- Are you planning to build and launch a new product? Then it's a good idea to be aware of the life cycle of product development to plan your business accordingly.

What is a product life cycle?

The product life cycle describes the stages a product goes through from launch to discontinuation. The cycle typically contains 4 phases:

Introduction: When your product is ready for the market, the introduction stage begins (you'll be building your brand, start promoting your product, and building your customer base).

Growth: The demand for your product will increase.

Maturity: The sales of your product will reach its peak.

Decline: When the maturity stage ends, you'll start to notice a steady drop in sales. Your customers will lose interest in your product or switch to a better product made by a competitor.

This framework is of course helpful, but it tells us nothing about how the product is actually developed. For that, we need to explore the product development life cycle.

What is the product development cycle?

The product development life cycle describes how new ideas are brought to the market and all the stages a product goes through.

1. Ideation: This is probably one of the most challenging stages. The goal here is to brainstorm a list of problems that need to be solved. During this phase, the team will generate several product ideas.

2. Validation: By the end of the first stage, you will have a long list of product concepts. Validation determines which ideas are worth pursuing and which are not.

3. Prototyping: Create a mockup or working model of the product using wireframing tools like Figma or Sketch. This will help you visualize how the final product will look, feel, and function.

4. Marketing: The marketing department will create the product's market strategy (developing the product's value proposition, creating tools and materials for the sales department, building marketing, and advertising campaigns)

5. Development: Ta-da! It's time to kick off the development of your minimum viable product (MVP). Remember your goal here is to get to the market as quickly as possible to start getting feedback from actual users. So you don't need to focus on building a full-fledged finished product at this time.

6. Launch: After developing and testing its MVP, you are now ready to go live.

7. Improvement: Keep in mind that launching your product is just the beginning. The final stage of improvement never really ends. Once launched, analyze how users interact with the product, what features they seem to like, and where there may be room for improvement.

Related content: Product Development Life Cycle: What It Is & Why You Should Care (https://addevice.io/blog/product-development-life-cycle/)