Project Management Life Cycle

Understanding the Project Management Life Cycle

Good project management lets businesses use their employees' time and skills in the best way possible. The likelihood that a company, even if it's a sole proprietorship with no employees, can use time and resources in the most efficient way without some sort of project planning is pretty slim, even if the planning only consists of a to-do list. Small projects might not seem to need planning or management, and the tasks required may flow naturally. Larger projects (like change management plans), especially when there are many people involved, are going to take some careful planning for the best chance of success.

The project management life cycle is simply the path you follow to take your project from concept to completion in the most efficient way. It's like a road map that you follow to get from where you are now to your destination, with some very distinct landmarks along with way. It is a project management best practice to understand the steps of the life cycle. There are four specific steps that can help keep you on track during a project.

Project Management Life Cycle—Four Basic Steps

The four steps that can help get you through any project, big or small, are:

•    Initiation
•    Planning
•    Execution
•    Closure

Some methodologies actually give project management five steps, adding one for monitoring and control between Execution and Closure. But as that's actually part of execution, it's easier to narrow the steps down to the basic four and simply make sure you understand what each of the steps entails.

Step 1: Initiation

This is the phase or step where you decide the parameters of the project, how you'll achieve the ends you want, and who might be in charge of different aspects of it. You'll want to have a very broad overview of the project as well as exactly what you want to achieve. If that sounds a bit overwhelming as if you have to have some vague idea of how to come up with all of this, then don't worry—you're not on your own in this step. There are project management tools available to help you complete this phase.

Start with what's called a Project Charter. You create this document by listing the reasons for the project, the goals of the project and any limitations (can't go over a certain budget number, for instance), and other important information such as what's at stake and what seems to be the best way to a successful end. This serves as a touchpoint and a reference document. Team members can look back at the charter to stay on track. It can also be used as a sales document for shareholders, and to help prioritize it within the day-to-day workflow of the organization.

Step 2: Planning

Project management planning is where you break down the tasks within the project from start to finish and assign each task to the person or team who will be responsible for it. During this phase, you figure out what each task entails and what the result will be when it's finished. Decisions will be made about how often reporting is necessary to keep the leader or leaders updated on everyone's progress, about the milestones that should be reached at specified times, and about the risk assessment for each task of the project or the project as a whole.

A risk assessment is important because it can help keep a project on schedule while making sure all the goals are met. For instance, a risk assessment might conclude that the graphics part of a project could take far longer than anticipated because of older graphics software. During the planning phase, the team should decide if it's better to invest some of the budget of the project into new graphics software to eliminate the potential problem, or whether it's acceptable to continue on without doing so. Basically, leaders and members will assess the risks of not meeting the goals of the project on time and within the budget, and determine what can be done to minimize those risks.

Step 3: Execution

This step involves using the plan that was created in the previous step and working that plan until the project is completed. This is usually the most challenging part of the project management life cycle, because unexpected things crop up, new problems arise and perhaps even new goals become necessary.

Part of the execution phase is the need to be able to roll with the punches and adapt the plan to fit the project's new needs, keep it on schedule and meet the project goals. Testing, controls, monitoring and lots of milestone checking are necessary in this phase.

Step 4: Closure

This is the final phase, where the leader or project manager will essentially put finishing touches on the project, the process will be reviewed and the project will be accepted or rejected by the client or the managing body. The initial plan and goals will be compared to the outcome to see how closely in line the project actually stayed.

The beauty of the project management life cycle is that anyone can use these steps to complete almost any project. And business forms and templates are available to help during every phase to make it easy to use this simple framework.