What is meant by Salesforce lifecycle?

A typical Salesforce Development Lifecycle involves multiple actors. Many of them are specialist of one role and some. have expertise in another. For example many project managers also work as release managers and many Developers also have.

The Salesforce lifecycle is about how you manage changes in your Salesforce environment, from the moment an idea or requirement comes up to when it's actually put into use. Think of it as a roadmap for changes.
The lifecycle starts with planning, where you figure out what you want to do. Then you move on to developing, which is where you create and test those changes in a separate environment. Once you're happy with them, you go to the deploying stage. Here, you move the changes to your production environment, which is where your users are.
Finally, you have the releasing stage. Here, you make the changes live and let your users know about them. Afterwards, there's support and maintenance to keep everything running smoothly. It's like a cycle, and it keeps spinning with every new change you make. This lifecycle helps you manage changes in a structured and efficient way, reducing risks and keeping everyone on the same page.