Lifecycle Phases in Product Development

Lifecycle Phases are used as an indicator of the stage for an item or document during the design and development process. Each phase represents a set of standard tasks or deliverables that are required before promoting an item to the next phase.

Each item or document must have a lifecycle phase associated with it. An object from a given class can be assigned to any of the lifecycle phases associated with that class. Before you can create or import items or documents or structures, the appropriate lifecycle phases must be created and assigned to the class used to create that object or structure (or to a parent class of the class used to create the object). When a business object is assigned to a lifecycle phase, that phase is visible as part of the object's attributes. In item or document structures, lifecycle phases name specific processes that are somewhat different - or in any case named differently - than the phases for the objects on the structure.

Four lifecycle phase types are predefined in the application:

• Design;

• Preproduction or Prototype;

• Production;

• Obsolete.

To change the lifecycle phase of an item, you must assign it to a change order. You can also reinstate the lifecycle phase from obsolete to an earlier one.

The administrator can create names for the lifecycle phases that are particular to your company's processes. There can also be multiple phases based on the same predefined phase; for example, the predefined Production phase can be split into phases named Production and In Manufacturing, each having company-specific meaning in the steps to build and ship products.