What Is The Difference Between Project And Product Life Cycle?

A product life cycle talks about the various stages a product goes through before it actually declines on the other hand the project life cycle is the set of activities that you need to complete to finish the project. This means that the stages in the product life cycle are controlled by external factors like entry of competitors, the cost structure, customer response etc but project life cycle is controlled by the one who is carrying it out. All products go through the same stages, some progress quickly while others do so slowly. The steps in the project life cycle can be delayed or skipped but this is not possible in the product life cycle. Generally people try to speed up the project and complete it as early as possible while they try to slow down the product life cycle stages.

As per definition mentioned earlier, Project is the one which is executed to create a unique product or services and Product is the outcome of a Project.

The product life cycle starts with the business plan, through idea, to product, ongoing operations and product divestment.

The project life cycle goes through a series of phases to create the product. It generally defines the task to be accomplished in each phase or sub-phase and the team responsible for each phase defined. In some application areas, such as new product development or software development (as in our example of banking application software development), organizations consider the project life cycle as part of the product life cycle.

Characteristics of a project life cycle:

* Risk and uncertainty is highest at the beginning phases and reduces thereafter as the project continues.

* The ability of the stakeholders to influence the final characteristics of the project’s product and the final cost of the project is highest at the start and gets progressively lower as the project continues.

* Cost of correcting an error increases as the project goes along.