The Product Life Cycle (PLC) Process is a Risk Management Process
At its core, the PLC is a smart process to minimize the risk to companies of making poor investment choices.
Among other things, the Product Life Cycle Process is a risk management process. When a robust PLC is put in place and practiced by the organization, the PLC essentially acts to minimize risk against:
- Making Poor Investment Choices – The PLC is all about prioritizing projects that have the most impact and need and working toward their development in an efficient way. Because of the various checks through the process to ensure that a given project is worthy of the next stage, the PLC serves to promote only those projects worthy of the next stage and investment in terms of time and money while others are halted.
- Allocating Resources to the Wrong Initiatives – Similar to number 1, the PLC works to ensure that initiatives are right-sized in terms of allocated resources and that resources are no longer allocated when an initiative or project fails to rise up to the requirements of the next stage.
- Instability in the Roadmap – A robust PLC process drives stability in the roadmap as processes and approval gates exist to ensure that projects are appropriately vetted, prioritized and promoted or cancelled based on requirements through the process. This creates stability in the roadmap and reduces the risk, waste and costs that commonly exist in organizations that don’t have a robust Product Lifecycle in place.
- Inefficient Allocation of Personnel and Development Resources – Product Management and Engineering/Development resources have a clear picture of what is prioritized to work on. In the absence of a PLC process, these teams may be focused on tactical initiatives or working on projects that would be prioritized lower if a PLC process did exist.
A PLC works to minimize risk across an organization when it comes to the allocation of resources and development of new offerings, enhancements to existing offerings, operational improvements, etc. Going further, a robust PLC in place can be a competitive differentiator because a PLC process is so seldom in place at smaller organizations and even larger organizations often fail to optimize their approaches.
As a Product Marketer, David has successfully launched products, services, solutions and platforms across a number of disciplines in the technology industry. David’s passion for Product Marketing and his eye for seeing how Product Marketing can lead to even stronger business outcomes led him to bring his expertise and knowledge to Shoot the Curl Marketing.