All living things on the earth goes through a different phase in its life such as conception, birth, growth and end-of-life, which is known as life cycle. Similarly, products and services also goes through a life cycle right from the ideation stage until the end-of-life, which we refer as greater life cycle. The greater life cycle can be divided into three broad life cycles as below:

• Ideation Life Cycle – you might have heard the saying that need is the mother of inventions. Need or problem or opportunity is the start point of any product or service creations. The ideation life cycle starts with one of these or a combination of these, that is need or problem or opportunity. The objective of ideation life cycle is to recognize the need and to ensure whether it is worth pursuing this idea to make it as a product.
• Product Development Life Cycle – It is also known as PDLC in short or SDLC in software companies. PDLC consists of business analysis, system design and project implementation. Both business analysis and system design are in the virtual world, meaning we do everything on a piece of paper that is we don’t produce anything physically. On the other hand, during the project implementation the system design is implemented and we bring the product to reality. Though we are saying PDLC is composed of these three stages they need not have to be water tight compartments, depending on the type of methodology we are using it can be one after the other or all the three may happen simultaneously. At the end of PDLC the first instance of the product is created physically. In case of a toy factory, at the end of PDLC one toy is created and then they will produce million pieces during Product Life Cycle (PLC). But in case of a construction company PDLC refers to creating only one 2 kilometers, 8 lanes bridge across a river.
• Product Life Cycle – Once the first instance of a product is successfully created then the Product Life Cycle (PLC) starts. PLC can be further divided into 4 stages such as introduction, growth, maturity and decline. We are creating a new product at the end of PDLC, then it is introduced in the market. During this period the product sales picks up slowly, then the sales grows, but after some time due to change in consumer behavior or because of competitor products or every one in the market has your product, the sales stabilizes which we call as maturity stage. The maturity stage continues for a while and then the product sales decline and the final point of this decline curve is referred as end-of-life of the product. During the PLC, the company gets lots of inputs from the market, customers, regulatory body, employees and suppliers on product improvement. So all these feedbacks should be reviewed and valid ones need to be implemented. Though we say the product development is completed in PDLC, the product improvement still continues in the PLC.

Each of these three life cycle stages are such as vast topic and can demand a book for itself. So Greater Life Cycle is composed of three phases

• Ideation Life Cycle (ILC)
• Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC)
• Product Life Cycle (PLC)

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