The typical project, when viewed in the large sense, involves an analysis and definition phase that refines the scope of the effort, a design and development phase, a testing and debugging phase, and finally, deployment into production. The project begins when funding is approved, and ends when the solution is deployed into production and accepted by the sponsors. This effort is linear, with a clear beginning and end, as shown here.

Interestingly, the project does not include any effort to monitor and manage the solution after it goes into the production. While the project may put these processes in place, if there are changes required based upon production monitoring, the project team is no longer in place to address it. A support team may exist, but these teams are normally focused on bug fixes and troubleshooting, at most. The resources that are needed to make incremental changes are more than likely assigned to new efforts.

A product management-based approach no longer views things in terms of a single linear effort with a clear beginning and end. Rather than being based on the project, the lifecycle is based on the product. The lifecycle begins when the need for version one is identified and funded, and ends when the last remaining version is decommissioned from production. In between those two events, there are any number of releases, each having the characteristics of the typical project: analysis and definition, design and development, testing, and deployment. The missing elements that tie it all together are the three M's: monitoring, management, and marketing as shown in the following figure:

These three M's are critical to getting out of the habit of linear projects and into the world of product management.

First Page: SOA Development - Service Lifecycle Management