The development of a comprehensive system for understanding the early stages of product development process helps in preventing excessive changes in the advanced phases of the life cycle. Increasing the transparency among product goals and potentials, arising from different life cycle phases is essential to enhance the process of product planning. Therefore, the primary objective of this work is to explore how the network of DFX guidelines can be characterized, and thereby, interrelations among the life cycle phases can be studied based on their association with different DFX guidelines. Conclusions about which life cycle phase plays an important role in pursuing and meeting certain life cycle-oriented goals and how these phases are interlinked are also drawn. The analyses were carried out using a Multiple Domain Matrix (MDM)-based approach, which includes deriving respective Design Structure Matrices (DSMs) to allow the detection of central life cycle phases and DFX guidelines based on structural metrics addressing the centrality of elements. © 2020, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.