The Project Life Cycle

What Is The Project Life Cycle?

• The project life cycle is :
• the order of processes and
• phases used in delivering projects.
• It describes the high-level process of delivering a project and
• the steps you take to make things happen.
• The PMI (Project Management Institute) has defined these five
process groups, or phases, which come together to form the project life
cycle.
1. Project Initiation
2. Project Planning
3. Project Execution
4. Project Monitoring & Controlling
5. Project Closure
1. Project Initiation Phase: Defining What
Needs To Be Done
• Initiating the first phase of the project life cycle is all about kicking off a project
 with your team and with the client, and getting their commitment to start the
project.
• Key Project Management Steps During Project Initiation:
• Make a project charter: What is the vision, objective, and goals of this project?
• Identify the high-level scope and deliverables: What is the product or service that needs to be provided?
• Conduct a feasibility study: What is the primary problem and its possible solutions?
• Ballpark the high-level cost and create a business case: What are the costs and benefits of the solution?
• Identify stakeholders: Who are the people this project affects, how does it affect them, and what are
their needs?
2. Project Planning Phase: Defining How
To Do What Needs To Be Done
• This is when you figure out how you’re going to perform the project
and answer these questions:
• What exactly are we going to do?
• How are we going to do it?
• When are we going to do it?
• How will we know when we’re done?
• evaluating those goals with three criteria: what’s Possible, Passionate,
and Pervasive?
• Possible: Strive for something that is achievable. Ask yourself, does this solution match
the budget? Does my team have the ability to do this? Do we have enough time? Setting
unrealistic goals is setting yourself up for failure.
• Passionate: Projects are tough, so you want a team that is emotionally engaged in the
project. Ask yourself, is this a project that your team can be passionate about? Is it
something that can bring them together to collaborate and achieve the same goal? Even
though it might be their job to do what you tell them to do, no one is going to invest into
something they don’t think is worthwhile
• Pervasive: Does this have the potential to become a ground-breaking success? Is this
something that is a complete solution to the problem that was given to you or is it really
just a band-aid solution? Does it have the potential to be improved on, developed, and to
become a permanent way of working?
• Key Project Management Steps For Project Planning:
• Create a project plan: Identify the phases, activities, constraints, and schedule, and create a project
timeline with a work breakdown structure and Gantt chart
• Create a financial plan: Create a project budget and cost estimate, and a plan to meet your maximum
cost, complete with allocations across resources and departments
• Create a resource plan: Build a great team and recruit and schedule the resources and materials needed
to deliver the project
• Create a quality plan: Set your quality targets and measures
• Create a risk plan: Identify the possible risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies; assign an owner;
and develop a mitigation plan for how will you avoid/overcome them
• Create an acceptance plan: Assign criteria for what constitutes ‘done’ and ‘delivered’
• Create a communication plan: List your stakeholders and plan the communication cadence
• Create a procurement plan: Find any 3rd party suppliers required and agree on terms
3. Project Execution Phase: Making A
Project Happen
Key Project Management Steps For Project Execution:
• Team leadership: Cast a vision for success and enable the team to deliver on
it
• Create tasks: Clearly define what needs to be done and the criteria for the
task
• Task briefing: Ensure the team are clear about what they need to do, and
when they need to do it by
• Client management: Work with the client to ensure deliverables are
acceptable
• Communications: Ensure you’re informing and updating the right people at
the right time through the right channel
4. Project Monitoring & Controlling
Phase: Keeping A Project On Track
• That means ensuring the project is going according to plan, and if it
isn’t, controlling it by working out solutions to get it back on track. 
• First, that means ensuring you capture the data (usually derived from
timesheets and reports in your project management software) to track progress
effectively against the original plan.
• Second, it means taking the data and comparing task completion, budget
spend, and time allocated in the original plan. By comparing the actuals
against the plan, you can establish whether or not you’re hitting the objectives
 for timeline, cost, quality, and success metrics.
• Key Project Management Steps For Project Monitoring And
Controlling:
• Cost & time management: Review timesheets and expenses to record, control, and track
against the project’s budget, timeline, and tasks
• Quality management: Reviewing deliverables and ensuring they meet the defined acceptance
criteria
• Risk management: Monitor, control, manage, and mitigate potential risks and issues
• Acceptance management: Conduct user acceptance testing and create a reviewing system,
ensuring that all deliverables meet the needs of the client
• Change management: When the project doesn’t go to plan, managing the process of
acceptable changes with the client to ensure they’re happy with necessary changes
5. Project Closure Phase: Ending A Project
• Key Project Management Steps For Project Closure:
• Project performance analysis: This is an overall look at how well the project was
managed, and whether the initial estimates of costs and benefits were accurate. Were there
unforeseen risks? What issues arose and how well were they dealt with? Has the project plan
been changed, and how?
• Team analysis: Did everyone do what they were assigned to do? Were they passionate and
motivated enough? Did they stay thorough and accountable? Was the communication within
the project team healthy and constructive?
• Project closure: Document the tasks needed to bring the project to an official end. This
includes closing supplier agreements, signing off contracts, and handing in all the necessary
project documentation.
• Post-implementation review: Write down a formal analysis of successes and failure,
resulting lessons learned, and suggestions for the future. At the end of every successful
project, you will learn that room for improvement always remains.
 How To Start A Project:
Complete Guide To Project
Initiation
The beginning of a project
the calm before the storm
What Is The
Project
Initiation
Phase?
How To Start A Project And What Do I Need
To Do In The Project Initiation Phase?
People
• Planning Your Team Shape
Run through the following checklist when
forming your team:
• Skills (what will they need to do)
• Experience (what will they need
to have worked on before)
• Stakeholders (how will they need
to communicate)
• Availability (will they have to the
time to dedicate)
• Budget (can you afford them)
Some good areas to discuss and raise
early are
• How do the team want to work?
• How and when should the team get
client or stakeholder feedback?
• How do the team want to communicate
with the client or stakeholder feedback?
• What regular meetings should the team
have internally? When should these be?
• Should catch-ups be ad-hoc and
informal, or more planned in?
2. Stakeholders
• Defining Who Is Involved And When
• What does the acronym RACI stand
for?
• Responsible
• Accountable
• Consulted
• Informed
• Responsible: Doing The Task
• Accountable: Owning The Task. This
person or role is responsible for the overall
completion of the task or deliverable. They probably
won’t do the work themselves, but are responsible
for making sure it’s finalized
• Consulted: Assisting with
Information & KnowledgeThis
person, role, or group will provide useful
information for completing the task or
deliverable. There will be two-way
communication between those responsible
and those consulted. This person is often a
subject matter expert
• Informed: Keeping Aware These
people or groups will be kept up to date
on the task or deliverable. This could be
updates and information provided about
project progress or snags the team hits
along the way
Process
1. metodology
• Think about the following things when considering the methodology:
• What is the size of your project?
• How fixed are the scope, timings and budget?
• What team do you have to work on it?
• Do you have a full-time team or are they shared with other projects?
• How does the client currently work?
• Will you have a fully invested client project lead?
2. Tools
•  this really depends on your project, your team, your client, and your
budget
• Some areas to consider when selecting what tools you need are:
• Resource planning and management e.g. Float or Resource Guru
• Project planning and managing timescales e.g. Microsoft Project or Gantt Pro
• Collaboration with stakeholders e.g. Google Sheets or Confluence
• Communication with your team and stakeholders e.g. Slack or Workspace
• Project managing internal tasks e.g. Jira or Trello
3. Risks
• Establishing risks that might keep the project from delivering is extremely important to do upfront
• Risks
• Events that will harm your project if they occur. Risk refers to the combined likelihood the event
will occur and the impact on the project if it does occur. If the probability of an event happening
and the impact on the project are high, then identify the event as a risk. The log includes
descriptions of each risk, a complete analysis and a plan to mitigate them.
• Assumptions
• Any factors that you are assuming to be in place will contribute to your project's successful result.
The log includes details of the assumption, its reason, and the action needed to confirm whether
the assumption is valid.
• Issues
• Something that is going wrong on your project and needs managing. Failure to manage issues may result
in poor delivery or even complete loss. The log includes descriptions of each issue, its impact, seriousness,
and actions needed to contain and remove it.
• Dependencies
• Any event or work that is either dependent on your project's result or on which your project will depend.
The log captures whom you are dependent on, what should be delivered and when. It may also include
who is dependent on you.
Product
• 1. Requirements
• Firstly, what are the requirements for your project? Before kicking off the
project properly and gathering requirements in the planning stage, it’s good to
outline what you know already. What are the business, client and user needs
for what you are creating? This helps you to have a clear understanding of the
background and context for the project.
• 2. Scope And Deliverables
• At this stage of the project, you have an idea of what the deliverables are.
Now’s the time to start fleshing this out, and putting some perimeters around
them, in order to be able to agree to these in the SoW or PID.
• 3. Setting Deliverables
• Taking the information you have, organise an internal meeting to go through
the deliverables with your team. If your team isn’t yet in place and you need to
push forward with setting the deliverables, meet with the discipline leads.
Make sure you get people to feed into these, don’t determine these in
isolation! When you review with your team, make sure you have these areas in
mind to review per deliverable:
• What is it?
• What format will it be in?
• Will rounds of amends be necessary?
• Who will be involved?
• When should this be delivered?
• Does it have dependencies on any other deliverables?
• 4. Budgets And Timings
• Following on from your list of deliverables, you now have a rough 
project scope and need to put timings and roles against this. Work with your
discipline leads to estimate timings and the team shape against this. Dependent
on the process, you might be estimating in Sprints or in phases with sign-offs.
Make sure you work with the team on these, to set the right perimeters. Again,
don’t force a process onto a project, make sure the process fits the project.
Agree the team shape, and then put costs against this. At this stage, for the PID
or SoW, you don’t need a detailed breakdown of timings but more an overview
of phases of time.
Triple Constraints Of Project
Management: 3 Tips & Why It Matters
• If you’ve ever taken a 
project management course, you’ve probably
got a knee-jerk response to this question:
• Scope
• Time
• Cost
• Scope
• Project scope refers to the extent, range, breadth, reach, confines, dimension, realm,
gamut, spectrum, or spread of the work that’s to be done on a project. It encompasses
the sum of products and services to be provided, describing what’s being done and
how much of it. You can learn more about scopes of work (and a guide to writing
them) in our complete SoW guide.
• Time
• Simply put, the duration (usually expressed in number of hours) required to
complete the project or tasks within the project.
• Cost
• Project cost refers to the resources—financial and otherwise—required to execute
the work. Costs might include labor, hardware, software, and other charges.
Project scope
• What is the project scope?
• Project scope is simply a way to describe the work you’re agreeing to deliver. It
describes the project constraints or limitations and project assumptions
• Why are Scope Statements important?
• The project scope is important because it defines the extent of your work based on
how much you are being paid to do it.
• What Is Included In A Project Scope Statement?
• The scope statement defines what’s in, and what’s out of the project. The scope
statements includes:
1. What’s being delivered (or in scope)
2. What’s not being delivered (or out of scope)
3. Assumptions to clarify the deliverables
4. Clarifications needed for any of the above
Types of Project Scope Statement
1.What the project is, why it’s happening, and the project goal (overview)
2.Who has approval (governance)
3.How the project will be completed (approach + phases + tasks)
4.What will be produced (project deliverables)
5.When it will be delivered (timeline + milestones)
6.What it will cost (estimate + payment schedule)
7.What is and isn’t included (assumptions)
Other Names For Scope Statements
• Statement of Work
• SoW (Statement of Work)
• Contracts
• Proposals
• Documents That Are Not The Same As “Scope Of Work”
Here are some related documents that are NOT equivalent to our scope statements —
typically the other legal documents you complete before, after, or while landing your
SoW:
• NDA: Nondisclosure Agreement, the contract that both parties sign before you
start talking “shop.” If you don’t have one in place right now, I don’t want to
know… go fix that :)
• MSA: Master Service Agreement, usually a really long and dry legal document
mainly handled by your account person (if they exist). It defines all the terms of
the relationship and sets up all future engagements. You need this before the SoW
comes.
• ICA: Independent Contractor Agreement, an important legal document that DPMs
often drive and own when negotiating with freelancers, professional services, or
contractors. This doc explains that it’s not a full-time employee for tax purposes.
• SLA: Service-Level Agreement, the legal document that defines the hosting,
domain services, and maintenance support commitments between your company
and the client.
5 Tips And Tricks To Define Scope
Statements Like A PRO
• 1. Start your project scope statement with the ‘Why’ (an overview)
• 2. Define the approval process for deliverables
• 3. Define what will be delivered (including timeline + milestones)
• 4. Define inclusions and exclusions list: What is and isn’t included
• 5. Make a Scope Statement Matrix