Handbook

Product development lifecycle (PDLC)

Reusable, **product-agnostic** blueprint for the full **product** lifecycle — from problem discovery through growth and sunset. It answers **"are we building the right product?"** while [`blueprints/s

Product development lifecycle (PDLC)

Reusable, product-agnostic blueprint for the full product lifecycle — from problem discovery through growth and sunset. It answers "are we building the right product?" while SDLC blueprint answers "are we building the product right?"

SDLC phases A–F sit inside the PDLC as the Build & Release engine; PDLC wraps around them with upstream validation and downstream outcome measurement.

Document Purpose
Product development lifecycle (PDLC) Phases P1–P6, artifacts, exit criteria, roles
PDLC ↔ SDLC bridge How PDLC and SDLC relate — diagrams, role mapping, artifact handoffs, worked example
approaches/ Deeper guides: Dual-Track Agile, Stage-Gate, Design Thinking, Lean Startup, PLM, Opportunity Solution Trees
templates/ Copy-paste starters: vision, experiment log, stage-gate review, metrics, GTM, sunset plan

Relationship to other packages

Package How PDLC relates
SDLC blueprint SDLC phases A–F are the delivery engine inside PDLC phases P3→P4. See PDLC ↔ SDLC bridge.
Product functional documentation blueprint Product-functional docs (docs/product/) hold the living artifacts that PDLC phases produce — vision, personas, journeys, capabilities.
Project management (PM) PM provides the governance layer between PDLC strategy and SDLC delivery — schedule, budget, risk, stakeholder management. PDLC decides what to build; PM governs how the execution is managed. See PM ↔ SDLC ↔ PDLC bridge.
Business analysis (BA) BA provides the analytical techniques that PDLC phases rely on — Strategy Analysis maps to P1–P3, Elicitation feeds P1–P2 discovery, Solution Evaluation maps to P5–P6. See BA ↔ SDLC ↔ PDLC bridge.
Agents blueprint (automation) Automation recipes may support PDLC activities (e.g. analytics collection, A/B test infrastructure).

Adopt in your repo

  1. Copy or submodule blueprints/pdlc/ alongside blueprints/sdlc/.
  2. Copy templates from templates/ into your project's docs/product/ or equivalent.
  3. Use Product development lifecycle (PDLC) to orient your team on where product work lives relative to delivery work.
  4. If you already use blueprints/sdlc/, read PDLC ↔ SDLC bridge to understand handoff points.

Canonical source is this repository on main. See Blueprint policy — do not change casually for change rules.

Canonical source

Edit https://github.com/autowww/blueprints/blob/main/pdlc/README.md first; regenerate with docs/build-handbook.py.