Understand Product Life Cycles

Found March 2009 at www.baselinemag.com/c/a/IT-Management/Understanding-Product-Lifecycles/ (no date)

1. Understanding Product Lifecycles
   Business cycle: time to react to market issues
   Development cycle: time to develop/deploy IT internally
   Technology cycle: time external technology becomes available, updated, or obsolete
2. Development cycle usually longer than business cycle; move towards agile methodologies reflects effort to match the two.
3. Technology cycle usually longer than development cycle; move towards enterprise technical architecture reflects efforts to coordinate.
4. Four tech cycle patterns can impact development and business cycles:
     - firefly
     - undercooked
     - conveyor belt
     - landfill
5. Firefly technologies: promising technologies that light up, vanish, then reappear farther away (forever in pre-release). Waiting for firefly technologies may seriously impact both development and business cycles.
6. Underdone technologies: available now, but not yet ready for prime time (e.g., version 1.0.0). Adoption and deployment may undermine stability of in-house technologies and processes.
7. Conveyor belt technologies: available and stable, but with too short a lifespan due to market issues or third-party dependencies. Adoption may result in a second transition to other technologies sooner than planned.
8. Landfill technologies: available, stable, but may not be worth adopting due to TCO, compatibility issues, or insufficient advantages over existing technologies.
   In effect, DOA.
9. Ask yourself:
     - Is it shipping?
     - Is it stable?
     - Is it going to be around for a long time?
     - Is it better than what I have now or can get soon?