Life cycle, life-cycle, or lifecycle may refer to:

Science and academia

Biological life cycle In biology, a biological life cycle (or just life cycle or lifecycle when the biological context is clear) is a series of changes in form that an organism undergoes, returning to the starting state. "The concept is closely related to those of the ...

, the sequence of life stages that an organism undergoes from birth to reproduction ending with the production of the offspring *

Life-cycle hypothesis In economics, the life-cycle hypothesis (LCH) is a model that strives to explain the consumption patterns of individuals. Background The hypothesis Implications Saving and wealth when income and population are stable The effect of population ...

, in economics *

Erikson's stages of psychosocial development Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, as articulated in the second half of the 20th century by Erik Erikson in collaboration with Joan Erikson, is a comprehensive psychoanalytic theory that identifies a series of eight stages that a health ...

, in psychoanalysis

Business

* Enterprise life cycle, the process of changing a business enterprise *

Project life cycle Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. Th ...

Product lifecycle In industry, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its inception through the engineering, design and manufacture, as well as the service and disposal of manufactured products. PL ...

, the stages in the lifespan of a commercial or consumer product *

New product development In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product (business), product to market, renewing an existing product or introducing a product in a new market. A central aspect of NPD is prod ...

, the process of bringing a new product to market *

Life-cycle assessment Life cycle assessment or LCA (also known as life cycle analysis) is a methodology for assessing environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the Product lifecycle, life cycle of a commercial product, Process lifecycle, process, or ...

, the analysis of the environmental impacts associated with a product *

Technology lifecycle The technology life-cycle (TLC) describes the commercial gain of a product through the expense of research and development phase, and the financial return during its "vital life". Some technologies, such as steel, paper or cement manufacturing, ...

, the commercial gain of a product

Software

Software development life cycle In software engineering, a software development process is a process of dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design, product management. It is also known as a software deve ...

Software release life cycle A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

Object lifetime In object-oriented programming (OOP), the object lifetime (or life cycle) of an object is the time between an object's creation and its destruction. Rules for object lifetime vary significantly between languages, in some cases between implementa ...

of an object in object-oriented programming *

Program lifecycle phase {{about, a technical topic, project management, software development process Program lifecycle phases are the stages a computer program undergoes, from initial creation to deployment and execution. The phases are edit time, compile time, link tim ...

s are the stages a computer program undergoes, from initial creation to deployment and execution

Systems engineering

Systems development life cycle In systems engineering, information systems and software engineering, the systems development life cycle (SDLC), also referred to as the application development life cycle, is a process for planning, creating, testing, and deploying an informa ...

, a process for planning, creating, testing, and deploying, maintaining, and ultimate disposal of system in all phases of existence.

Arts and entertainment

* ''Life Cycles'' (The Word Alive album), 2012 * ''Life Cycle'' (Dave Holland album), 1983 * ''Life Cycle'' (Sieges Even album), 1988 * ''Life Cycle'' (Whit Dickey album), 2001 * ''Lifecycle'' (album), a 2008 album by Yellowjackets

Other uses

* Jewish life cycle, a series of traditions associated with major life events in Judaism *

Records life-cycle Records life-cycle in records management refers to the following stages of a records "life span": from its creation to its preservation (in an archives) or disposal. While various models of the records life-cycle exist, they all feature creation ...