Question 1: Stages of product life cycle are: start-up, growth, maturity, decline and the issues
the firm needs to address during each of these stages are different. Discuss in scholarly detail
potential strategic issues your firm would need to address in each of these stages.
The fascinating concept I noted with product development life cycles is its striking
similarities to software development life cycles (SDLC). In the case of SDLC (depending on who
you ask—many software developing entities have varying phase definitions), they would be
inception, design, implementation, maintenance, auditing, and disposal. Other technology
products implement a cycle of phases—as noted in the question—of start-up, growth, maturity,
and decline. The similarities are rather remarkable.
The startup stage is when a new form of technology or a product is introduced to the
market. A pressing concern in this phase is advertising costs, which are at its highest rate for the
purposes of adequate exposure so that consumers are aware of its existence and to educate them
on the practical uses of the product. This is a stage in which I believe is most vital—there have
been a number of instances in which there was an existing technology that I never knew existed
simply because the business implementing it said very little about it and expected their
consumers to learn about it through their blogs and/or forum announcements—the latter of which
I personally prefer not to use due to the proliferating amounts of “trolls” and misinformation).
An excellent example of this is the concept of artificial intelligence language model
“GPT-3” (an abbreviation for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer”) that was developed by the
research and development company OpenAI. This technology can be used by developers and
ethical hackers to not only generate coding for a specific described purpose, but also
communicate in a near life-like conversation with an automated chatbot and learn further detailed
information about different computer science topics, the best programming languages to use,
operating system kernel layouts and much more. Since my discovery of this technology, this has
both expedited my production levels tenfold and deepened my understanding in the field of
penetration testing and ethical hacking, revealing dozens of breakthroughs I never would have
thought of myself. However, since OpenAI made no expenditures to advertise this
groundbreaking technology of theirs I--and various other colleagues—was completely unaware of
its existence and only randomly learned about it by word of mouth—specifically when coding
instructors began complaining and implementing rules after learning of students using this
technology to cheat by producing AI generated coding. This is a poor marketing strategy that
hinders growth and revenue and is akin to running a store with high demand merchandise but
failing to advertise your existence or even post a sign to attract customers, assuming consumers
will sooner or later hear about your store and visit. Consumers cannot invest in something they do
not know even exists.
The next stage is the growth stage, in which profit margins increase, which calls for an
uptick in production to adequately accommodate the climbing rate of consumer demand. In this
stage, it is important to focus on key performance indicators (KPI’s) such as efficiency, quality,
performance issues, timeliness and consumer feedback. (Notter, 2022). This is to streamline the
process of refining the product performance, strengthening its image and recognition, and
increasing its competitiveness in the market. Pricing appropriately should also be done
strategically—I am reminded of the instance in late 2007 in which the technology company
Apple introduced the first iPhone. It became so wildly popular that Apple’s CEO proudly
announced that he decided to drastically reduce its introductory price of $599 to $399—which
seriously infuriated many consumers who had already purchased the product for the significantly
higher price. (Apple would later elect to send rebates to consumers for the $200 discount they
would have saved).
The maturity stage of a product life cycle is, for lack of a better description, when a
product is “as good as it gets.” At this stage, costs for production and marketing steeply decline
and competition is typically at its fiercest at this point. This is the stage once again to stabilize
sales by evaluating vital KPI factors and identifying strengths and weaknesses, as well as
identifying consumer bases and target audiences that may not have been considered and
brainstorm innovate ways in which the product can be used to suit their goals and needs. A good
example of this Microsoft’s strategic decision to contract with various higher learning institutions
and tailoring their Office software suite to service college students as well as providing said
software suite for a reduced subscription cost rather than requiring a full license payment (which
was often notably exorbitant.)
The decline stage is when the product begins to lose its popularity, as noted in a market
share loss and waning interest in marketing efforts. Underlying causes for that generally stem
from market saturation in which other entities provide a similar product that is less expensive or
easier to acquire or when another product causes a disruption in technology and innovation that
results in the product becoming obsolete. This is the phase in which to decide whether to phase
out the product altogether or create a new improved version—the latter of which comes with
considerable risk of funding and revenue loss in the event the release of the improved version
fails to stir interest within the market. In most instances, companies simply elect to refrain from
any further promotion or marketing of the product and instead focus on strategies that would
maximize its profits as much as possible as its presence on the market concludes.
Question 2: How should managers develop buy-in from the various groups and areas within
the organization? Does getting the support of employees and other stakeholders require
strategic planning?
The support of stakeholders—which includes employees—is vital in determining
technology that will be implemented company wide. A perfect example of this is when I was
employed with Bosch Service Solutions in Berlin, Germany in 2013 as a software developer. An
outstanding issue at that time was that many developers preferred to work on Linux based
desktop systems while others preferred Windows or MacOS. This caused a serious strain in
relation to communications between systems, as files generated on operating systems foreign to
an operating system a receiver is using was often incompatible and needed to be saved in a
specific format. Coding on compilers from different OS’s was also a serious obstacle. Adding to
the headache was the fact that IT technicians were often well versed in one OS but not another,
meaning that if someone was having a technical issue on their Linux system and the on-call
technician was only an expert with Windows OS platforms, the developer would either need to
use another system or seek help over the phone from a technician in a Bosch office in Frankfurt.
Management addressed this issue by contracting with the virtual systems company Citrix
Systems and implemented an enterprise level cloud-based system called “Citrix in which a major
server would run virtualized versions of all three operating systems that could be access from any
terminal. Anyone needing to see or edit work from another OS could simply switch to that
particular OS on the cloud server and work with it from there.
However, we developers (as vital stakeholders) had not been consulted by management
about their decision to use an enterprise level virtual system from Citrix. Had any of us been
consulted for feedback, we would have all loudly protested this decision, as Citrix virtual systems
were considered the bane of a developer’s existence due to its notorious instability, nightmarishly
slow speeds with large amounts of information, and persistent loss of machine state (which would
result in a loss of data and subsequently wasted effort and salary costs).
What we dreaded would happen became a reality only months later as our network scaled
and productivity increased—our systems would “freeze” constantly, resulting in hours of lost
work. Saved machine states would randomly vanish—depending on the last time the machine
state had been saved, this meant that if your work had not been backed up in the last two weeks
or so, you might as well have told your project manager you were on vacation for two weeks
since all work from that point simply vanished into thin air. Despite technicians scrambling with
specialized developers from Citrix System to stabilize their virtual environment system, it simply
could not maintain trustworthy stability, resulting in developers wasting terabytes of diskspace
saving various machine states constantly. It was only after developers began resigning that Bosch
Service Solutions scrapped the Citrix cloud virtual system and elected to contract with VMware
Inc., who provided a much more stable cloud based virtual system.
It was a venture that costed Bosch Service Solutions over $200,000 in addition to
thousands of dollars wasted on developer salaries to redo lost work and the loss of some very
talented developers and coders who sought employment elsewhere. This would have been
avoided had feedback from stakeholders been taken into consideration first and further research
done on the product of interest for the business.
Question 3: Develop a strategic plan for your life. Using the definition of technology and the
management of technology we have learned, how would you expect the technologies in your
life to change and the value they deliver as you implement your strategic plan?
For my line of work as an ethical hacker and penetration tester, technology management
is paramount in order to be successful in my career. Moore’s Law—despite having been declared
dead or doomed to be obsolete by the year 2025—states that processor speeds will double every
year, which consistently creates rapidly advancing technology that businesses will implement…
and more innovated way for cybercriminals to manipulate this technology for nefarious purposes.
Our never-ending jobs as ethical hackers is to discover possible flaws in this technology before
criminals do. One excellent example of this is an MIT student who discovered a critical flaw in
the blockchain technology that cryptocurrency medium Wormhole was using—the vulnerability
he discovered, had it been noticed by a criminal, would have allowed an attacker execute a
ransomware attack by taking over a blockchain network and holding it hostage for his specified
amount of money, causing a loss of $736 million in assets (This student received an astounding
$10 million reward for this discovery).
This is an excellent example of how important it is for ethical hackers to stay constantly
informed of the existing technology—even technology that is not personally of interest to them.
As our most shared saying goes: “It’s not a matter of if, but when.” Criminals will find a way to
subvert protocols and technologies and defeat its security implementations. Given this fact, I
manage technology not only by being involved with various forums that are based on hacking,
but I continuously subscribe to magazines about any technology that uses a form of networking
or has the ability to use a form of networking (Even with children’s toys—in 2017, a hacker used
an internet connected teddy bear called “Cloudpet” to gain access to a customer database
containing passwords, email addresses, and personal recordings saved by the customers and held
it hostage for a ransom.)
Discord channels have also been a very rich source of managing technology, as not only
are there channels dedicated to ethical hacking, but there are countless channels dedicated to
topics such as new programming languages, kernel architecture and design, and proof of concept
discoveries for zero-day vulnerabilities. These are all concepts and themes I need to be aware of
regularly. While a webserver might be declared secure having been tested with various Python,
C/C++, and scripting attacks—do I want to make myself liable by declaring something safe, only
for someone to implement an attack with a new programming language such as Go or Swift, all
because I was not willing to learn about this new technology?
Question 4: How would you asses the areas of sustainability, corporate social responsibility
and ethics within your organization?
Corporate social responsibility is about public image—this include finding innovative
methods to enhance and contribute to society. This particular topic, I believe, strongly aligns
itself with the instituted company mission that was conceived during the engineering and design
of the company itself. This should not collectively imply that all businesses should exist to serve
the public trust (as we all know that many corporations are notorious for being the antithesis of
that) or engage in philanthropic endeavors, but there are ways for a company to preserve their
public imagine while still operating and generating healthy profits.
In a previous technology management class, I studied about the importance of
maintaining written guidelines and policies for every known possible scenario and holding
employees accountable to these guidelines. This business strategy, in my opinion, is the strongest
method of maintaining social responsibility as well as boosting morale within the workplace. I
will gladly elaborate further on this matter.
For example, many people have experienced business who maintain strict written policies
on behavior on social media, forbidding them from mentioning the company by name or
discussing any internal events that have occurred. This is to insure that the company’s brand and
image is not be improperly tarnished and that false or misleading information about the company
is being broadcasted. Conversely (and surprisingly enough) even posting positive and/or
promotional information about an employer can lead to legal consequences if the author of the
post fails to mention that he is employee of the company—inviting sanctions and lawsuits from
the Federal Trade Commission for unfair competition (Jackson, 2016)
Guidelines also boost morale within the internal operations of a corporation. Excellent
examples of this include maintaining a strict policy about customer confidentiality and data
handling, which gives customers the confidence that their personal information is secure with the
company and its employees—instituting a firm bond of trust that solidifies the company’s public
image. Guidelines also can be instituted to hold employees accountable if they are knowledgeable
about a violation of rules of policies that endanger either the company’s image or any form of
customer asset attained by the company.
I have also seen guidelines that discuss environmental concerns, specifically the use of
energy by the company’s equipment. Usually, specific personnel would be assigned to review the
energy usage and search for more energy friendly pieces of technology if it is deemed that an
unreasonable amount of energy is being used.
Question 5: Discuss the steps in innovation project management.
The first step in any form of project management is to properly identify an objective and
formulate a scope. A scope is a set of parameters that identify relevance to the direct needs of the
project as well as any constraints and limitations, and how they align with the project objective. A
project without a clear objective is in danger of disorganized operation, which would result in
issues such as premature project fund depletion, overdue conclusion of the project, or discovery
of unforeseen situations that render the project impossible or too expensive to complete. During
this phase, variables to the project such as stakeholders, costs and budgets, limitations, and a
work breakdown structure are identified and discussed in detail.
The next crucial step in innovation project management is risk identification. In my
opinion, this is the most crucial part of any project plan. This phase will identify risks that not
only would endanger the project but would endanger business operations and/or its relative
customers. Such risks can include content violation, copyright infringements, insufficient staff, or
signal interference, or service availability issues. Other factors such as environmental factors,
harm to stakeholders, and limited funding to maintain the costs of the ending product results
should also be considered. With each identified risk factor, a probability, impact, and danger
rating are assigned, and a mitigation plan is formulated for each one.
Cost and budget analysis is usually the next step. This step is to formulate a tangible cost
of all factors such as equipment, external working contracts with third party agencies, salaries,
and operational costs. This phase is also an excellent time to definitively validate the concepts of
the project entirely, calculate an expected return on investment, and formulate an expected
viability ratio of the project’s success. A growth plan can also be formulated here to determine
how to expand the product’s capabilities as the business itself expands. From there, a schedule
can be dictated, and all figures presented to management for approval.
References:
Notter J. Adapt Company Culture KPIs to the Hybrid Workplace. TD: Talent Development.
2022;76(5):54-58.
Jackson, Amy; Article “Is it Illegal to Criticize Your Employer on Social Media?”; November 16,
2016; [Link]
