Basic Administration > Supporting Collaboration > Life Cycle Administration > Life Cycle Management > Understanding Life Cycles > Basic and Advanced Life Cycles
  
Basic and Advanced Life Cycles
Windchill supports two types of life cycles:
Basic
The basic life cycle is designed to use a context team. A basic life cycle does not include workflow process definitions and relies on the workflow process definitions with change management, routing, or promotion processes.
When you create an object with a basic life cycle and select a team template, the selection of the team has no effect. Basic life cycles do not utilize teams or workflows.
Advanced
The advanced life cycle type provides the ability for a separate team to be assigned for instances of this object type. You can also include workflow process definitions within the life cycle states to manage the maturing of the object type.
Use this type for managing objects that require company-specific business processes, special access control requirements, or additional flexibility in managing these types of objects.
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PTC recommends that you use a basic life cycle for improved performance and scalability.
Any particular context can have a mix of basic and advanced life cycles associated with objects. Ideally, an object is associated with an advanced life cycle only when necessary, such as when you route an object in Windchill ProjectLink.
Life Cycle Feature
Basic
Advanced
Configure life cycle properties, including:
• Name
• Where the template is stored and is therefore accessible.
• The object class to which the life cycle applies.
Life cycle phases to represent object states.
Transition rules to define how an object can move from one life cycle phase to another.
The option to make the life cycle available for routing.
When this option is selected, you can include the life cycle in the Route action that is available for packages and from Windchill ProjectLink contexts.
The ability to configure roles for each life cycle phase, and map participants to these roles.
The ability to configure access control permissions for any defined role. The rules apply to the primary business object.
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Life cycle access rules remain in place for the duration of the life cycle phase. When the object moves to another phase, these permissions change.
The ability to associate a workflow process with a life cycle phase or gate.