Document the component lifecycle

The component lifecycle describes the succession of stages that the component goes through over time. A robust component lifecycle management includes versioning and planning for successor components to ensure that IT continues to support critical business areas.

Not all company's document their component lifecycles and it is not mandatory in Alfabet. However, robust component lifecycle management is key to the health to the business and helps you to understand identify and manage lifecycle conflicts. By documenting the lifecycles of the components in your technology portfolio, you will be able to identify which components are approaching end-of-life but have no defined successor components. Furthermore, you can understand which applications are at risk if the relevant technologies are no longer available.

In Alfabet, a component lifecycle consists of the following stages:

The active period of the component is the time between the component's start and end date. Each lifecycle phase is aligned with the proceeding and succeeding lifecycle phase that has been defined. Typically, the object state is set to Active during the lifecycle phase Manufacture Support. Gantt reports that visualize the component lifecycle will also reflect the component’s active period which is when the component is actually being used in the enterprise. This object state typically corresponds to the component’s start and end dates and should be set to Active when the active is in use.

Define the component's lifecycle. Click the navigate  Navigate button of the component to open the content area. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Lifecycle view and open it.