Product Lifecycle Stage: The Tag That Changes Everything About Prioritisation
Why the Same BRICE Score Means Different Things for Different Products
This is one of RoadmapOne ’s articles on Objective Prioritisation frameworks .
Every product travels through stages: Introduction, Growth, Maturity, Decline. A feature that makes sense in Growth stage becomes waste in Decline. An investment that’s essential in Introduction becomes overkill in Maturity.
Product Lifecycle Stage isn’t a prioritisation framework—it’s a tagging framework that changes how you interpret prioritisation scores. Knowing which stage a product occupies transforms what “high priority” means.
Tag your products by lifecycle stage (Introduction, Growth, Maturity, Decline), then use that context when evaluating prioritisation scores. A mature product has different investment logic than a growth-stage product. In Maturity, you optimise for efficiency—cost reduction, automation, incremental improvements. In Growth, you invest ahead of revenue—features that expand the market, capabilities that differentiate. The lifecycle tag changes how you interpret BRICE scores, not whether you use them.
The Four Stages
Introduction: Building Product-Market Fit
The product is new. You’re searching for product-market fit, testing hypotheses, iterating rapidly. Revenue is minimal or non-existent. The goal is learning, not efficiency.
Investment logic:
- High tolerance for experimentation
- Short iteration cycles
- Focus on validation over scale
- Willing to throw away work that doesn’t validate
RGT alignment: Primarily Transform work—building something that doesn’t exist yet, high uncertainty.
Growth: Scaling What Works
Product-market fit is established. Customers are arriving faster than you can serve them. The goal is scaling—building capabilities to handle demand, expanding reach, capturing market share.
Investment logic:
- Invest ahead of revenue
- Build for scale, not just functionality
- Expand features to capture adjacent use cases
- Aggressively pursue market share
RGT alignment: Primarily Grow work—expanding proven concepts to capture more value.
Maturity: Optimising the Machine
Growth is slowing. The market is saturated or competition has intensified. The product is profitable but not expanding. The goal is efficiency—maximising returns from the existing position.
Investment logic:
- Optimise for margin, not growth
- Cost reduction and automation
- Incremental improvements, not new capabilities
- Defend market share rather than expand it
RGT alignment: Primarily Run work—keeping the lights on, maintaining competitive position.
Decline: Managing the Exit
The market is shrinking or the product has been superseded. Revenue is falling. The goal is extracting remaining value while managing the sunset.
Investment logic:
- Minimise investment
- Harvest remaining revenue
- Migrate customers to replacement products
- Manage technical debt rather than fix it
RGT alignment: Run work only—absolute minimum to keep customers served during transition.
How Lifecycle Stage Changes Prioritisation
Consider a BRICE-scored initiative with strong numbers: Business Importance = 3, Reach = 5,000, Impact = High, Confidence = 80%, Effort = Medium.
That same score means different things depending on lifecycle stage:
For an Introduction-Stage Product
A strong BRICE score matters less than validation. You might fund a lower-BRICE initiative that tests a critical hypothesis over a higher-BRICE initiative that optimises a flow you’re not sure customers want.
The prioritisation question isn’t “which has the highest score?” It’s “which teaches us the most about product-market fit?”
For a Growth-Stage Product
Strong BRICE scores drive decisions. You’re scaling what works, so initiatives with high reach, high impact, and reasonable effort deserve investment. The BRICE ranking largely determines priority.
Growth stage is where quantitative prioritisation frameworks shine—you have enough data to score accurately, and the goal is maximising value capture.
For a Mature Product
A high-BRICE initiative might still be the wrong investment if the strategic decision is to harvest rather than extend. The product is profitable—do we really want to allocate scarce engineering capacity to improving it further, or should that capacity go to growth-stage products?
Lifecycle context overrides the raw score. A mature product with strong BRICE initiatives might still get less capacity than a growth product with moderate BRICE initiatives.
For a Declining Product
Almost no initiative is worth funding. The BRICE score is irrelevant because the strategic decision is to minimise investment. Even a “high priority” bug fix competes against the option to sunset faster and redirect capacity.
Lifecycle + RGT: Different Questions, Complementary Answers
Lifecycle Stage and Run/Grow/Transform answer different questions:
| Framework | Tags What? | Question Answered |
|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle Stage | The product | Where is this product in its journey? |
| RGT | The objective | What’s the strategic intent of this work? |
You can—and should—use both.
Expected Combinations
Certain lifecycle stages pair naturally with certain RGT categories:
| Lifecycle Stage | Expected RGT Mix |
|---|---|
| Introduction | High Transform, some Grow, minimal Run |
| Growth | High Grow, some Transform, increasing Run |
| Maturity | High Run, some Grow, minimal Transform |
| Decline | All Run, no Grow or Transform |
When reality doesn’t match these expectations, that’s a conversation worth having.
Red Flags to Watch
Mature product with 50% Transform: Either leadership is planning a strategic pivot (valid) or someone is mislabelling work to make it sound more innovative (problematic). Mature products shouldn’t need major reinvention.
Growth product with 80% Run: Your growth product is being strangled by maintenance. If you’re spending most of your capacity keeping the lights on, you’re not actually growing—you’re treading water.
Introduction product with mostly Run: You’re optimising something that hasn’t been validated. Cut the Run work and get back to learning.
Board Conversations
Lifecycle tagging enables sophisticated board conversations:
“Product A is mature, so we’re allocating 70% of its capacity to Run work and 30% to Grow for incremental improvements. Product B is in growth, so we’re allocating 40% to Grow and 30% to Transform bets. Product C is in decline, so we’re investing only in migration support.”
The lifecycle context explains why different products get different investment profiles. Without it, boards might question why Product A (your cash cow) gets less innovation investment than Product B (still proving itself). The lifecycle tag makes the logic transparent.
Connecting to Capacity
In capacity-based planning , you allocate squad-sprints to objectives. Lifecycle stage informs how much total capacity each product deserves:
- Introduction products: Enough capacity to iterate quickly on validation
- Growth products: Aggressive capacity to capture market opportunity
- Mature products: Sustainable capacity to maintain without over-investing
- Declining products: Minimal capacity to manage sunset
The lifecycle decision happens before individual objective prioritisation. “Product A (mature) gets 15% of portfolio capacity” is a strategic choice that then constrains which objectives within Product A can be funded.
Practical Implementation
Tag Products, Not Objectives
Lifecycle stage tags the product, not individual objectives. All objectives within a product inherit the same lifecycle context. If you find yourself wanting to tag objectives differently, you might be conflating products.
Review Lifecycle Assignments Annually
Products don’t change stage often, but they do change. A growth product that’s plateauing might be entering maturity. A mature product that’s losing share might be entering decline. Review assignments during annual planning.
Define Stage Boundaries
What does “Growth” mean for your portfolio? 20%+ YoY revenue growth? Increasing market share? Growing customer count? Set explicit criteria so stage assignments are objective, not vibes.
Use Lifecycle to Challenge Prioritisation
When someone advocates strongly for an initiative, check the lifecycle context. “This is a high-BRICE initiative for a declining product. Are we sure we want to extend its life rather than accelerate migration?”
The Bottom Line
Product Lifecycle Stage is a tagging framework that transforms how you interpret prioritisation scores. The same BRICE number means different things for an Introduction product (validate first) versus a Mature product (is this worth extending?) versus a Declining product (why are we investing at all?).
Tag your products by lifecycle stage. Pair that tag with RGT tags on objectives. Use the combination to inform board conversations about why different products get different investment profiles.
Then use RICE , BRICE , or another framework to prioritise within the lifecycle-appropriate capacity allocation. The lifecycle tag sets the context; the prioritisation framework does the ranking.
Different products, different investment logic. The lifecycle tag makes that logic explicit.
References
- Theodore Levitt, “Exploit the Product Life Cycle” (Harvard Business Review, 1965) — Original lifecycle model
- Run/Grow/Transform — Complementary strategic tagging framework
- Capacity-Based Planning — Allocating squad-sprints by product
- BRICE Prioritisation — Prioritising within lifecycle context
- Objective Prioritisation Frameworks — Complete guide to all frameworks