The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

33.2. Life-Cycle Management: Work Areas and Work Structures

LCM may be the most challenging dimension of product management, namely because it includes such a multitude of different and varied activities. But these can be grouped into three broad work areas: (1) ongoing P&L management of an existing product ("postlaunch product management"), (2) introducing enhancements and derivatives, and (3) providing input into the planning for the next new product to which existing customers are likely to be migrated. Ongoing P&L management tends to be almost a full-time job on most products. But most LCM managers are also asked to be the project manager or oversee the project team that introduces derivatives or enhancements for their assigned products. And many of the enhancement and derivative projects take almost as much time and effort as the original new product development and introduction project. Finally, since the LCM manager is the one person who lives with the product and its markets, customers, and day-to-day issues, he/she is in the best position to provide guidance for planning a migration or replacement product. Adopting best practices for managing product enhancements and derivatives can result in the life-cycle curves of long-lived products often looking like Figure 33.1 instead of a single S-curve.

NOTE

Life-cyck management is by far the most complex and difficult assignment in the product management business function.

Many industries assign LCM responsibilities to a single ...