I have some doubts with figures in CSDM 4.0 White Paper

[jordimsant]

I am actually reading the CSDM 4.0 White Paper and I have a problem in understanding some of the figures appearing in the document. I have found the following image:

It appears at the end of page 8. I understant that Green Boxes are referring to Life Cycles Stages and White Boxes to Life Cycle Statuses under its Green Life Cycle Stage, but what does it mean with the "Product Model" at the bottom? As it is said in this document, "Product models are specific versions or configurations of a product used for managing and tracking through various ServiceNow platform applications.". It is obvious that Life Cycle Stages and Life Cycle Statuses cannot be a Product Model as they are not CIs but Attributes. Is it making reference to the fact that this Ideation Life Cycle Status is only disposable in Product Models? If this is the case, then I cannot understand the following picture:

It is immediatly the next image. How is it possible that related stages make reference to different type of CIs? I am so lost in this topic, so I would be grateful for some help. The document I am always talking is the following: https://www.servicenow.com/community/common-service-data-model/it-is-time-csdm-4-0-draft-white-paper...

Thanks for everything,

Jordi

[Barry Kant]

Good day Jordi,

the life cycle is little different for a product model than for example for a hardware object. 
In the life_cycle_control table that can be seen per class. With a note that it also inherits the values for the parenting class. So, most generic values are on base class, and the specific values are defined per class in this table. 

The bottom picture shows an end2end scenario:
A procured hardware asset has a life cycle. The hardware asset has a product model (with a life cycle). The asset will have an operational CI related with a life cycle. 
This needs to be aligned --> that is to control the overall life cycle. You want to know if you have operational CIs of a model that is out of support.

Hope this explains it a little bit better.
BR,
Barry

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @jordimsant,

The first image is the complete list life cycle stages and status for Product Models.

The second image is an aggregated list of relevant life cycles for each of the hardware asset types to show the overall hardware life cycle. At the "design" stage in the hardware lifecycle we are referring to a product model only (for example, we are planning on constructing a new medical device). Later on in the lifecycle it becomes a "real" thing, and at this point we are referring to the actual Asset (actual instances of that product model as assets).

Hope this helps!