Basic Administration > Supporting Collaboration > Life Cycle Administration > Life Cycle Management > Understanding Life Cycles > Life Cycle States
  
Life Cycle States
The sophistication of business processes to manage an object depends upon the maturity of the object. The life cycle state is an enterprise object, and its meaning is applied regardless of the life cycle by which a given object was processed.
For example, if an access control rule applies to a Requirements object in the Under Review state, the rule is applicable to all Requirements objects in that state, even if they arrived at the state through different life cycles. However, each phase of a life cycle must be associated with a life cycle state chosen from among all states defined in the system.
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If the domain policy access control rule denies access to a user and if an ad hoc access control rule grants the user access, then the ad-hoc policy is used, that is, the user is granted access. Ad hoc policies overrule and can provide access to a user where the domain policy denied it. For more information, see Setting Permissions.
As a life cycle administrator, you can create a variety of life cycles. These life cycles, which are stored in the System folder, define the phases and gates associated with various business objects. For the life cycle of each object, you can define the transitions through which the object must move, and the behavior associated with the object while it is in a specific state.
Windchill provides a “Default” life cycle, with many predefined states, such as In Work, Under Review, and Released.
Before you begin creating life cycles, you should understand life cycle iteration and life cycle roles.
For information on setting the life cycle state, see Life Cycle Phases.