Joseph Phillips: Defining the Project Life Cycle

Projects are comprised of phases. Typically the completion of a project phase creates a deliverable and allows the next phase of the project to begin. Smaller projects often only have one phase so the completion of that phase creates the project deliverable and allows the project to end. Phases are comprised of work related to creating a condition or thing.

Let’s look an example. Pretend you’re a project manager for an architectural firm (unless you actually are a project manager for an architectural firm), and I’ve hired your company to create my dream home. The creation of this home would have some obvious phases to allow the project to move concept to finished reality. The first phase of this project could be the design phase, where you’d do requirements gathering with your project team, work with the architects to get the blueprints just right, and work with me to ensure that your project team has captured my vision of the finished project. The next phase of the project would be the exaction phase and then the foundation phase, the framing phase, and so on until all of the phases have created a wonderful home and the project was completed.

Did you notice how each phase of the pretend project created something? The design phase made blue prints. The exaction phase prepared the land for the building. The foundation phase created the rough basement and foundation. And so on. Each phase made something towards the project deliverables and the sum of all the phases creates the project’s product.

This is called the project life cycle. A project life cycle is the progression of the project phases from the first phase all the way through the final project phase. Project life cycles are unique to application areas. You probably won’t have too many foundation phases in health care or in IT. You would, of course, have phases that are logical to the application area you’re working in – and that are unique to the project that you’re managing.

Real World Note: Phases can be called lots of things. Some organizations call phases stages. Other companies call phases a work unit. And your company may have an entirely different set of nomenclature for phases like just the name of the work that’s happening in that phase. It’s not big deal what terminology you want to assign to a phase – it’s the concept that’s important. A phase is a portion of the project that creates a deliverable and allows the next phase to begin.

Completing a phase doesn’t necessarily allow the next project to phase to begin automatically – though it often does. What may be attached to the end of a project phase is called a “kill point.” A kill point isn’t as scary as it sounds. It’s an opportunity for management, or often the project customers, to look at how the project is performing. If things aren’t going so hot on the project, and by not so hot I mean that the project is late, over-budget, or quality is suffering, then the project can be killed at the point.

Sometimes a project is performing well, but a kill point is enacted anyway. There can be legitimate reasons for killing a project regardless of excellent performance. Consider a leap in technology that supersedes the technology a project may be implanting; it would be foolish to continue implementing the technology that’s outdated, so the project is killed instead. Research and development projects are other examples of projects that are killed, because the research done through the end of a given phase has warranted the project to continue. There is no sense throwing good dollars after bad.

Within the project lifecycle and attached to the project phase you may have to work with cash flow forecasting. Here’s the pitch: you’re managing an $80 million project that’s scheduled to last five years. Management and your customer are probably not going to just write a check for 80 million bucks and send you on your way. More likely you will be completing a phase-gate estimate and will be working with step funding.

So what’s a phased-gate estimate? Glad you asked. This is an estimate type where you provide a budget estimate for the entire project, as in $80 million dollars, but then you prepare a very detailed phased-gate estimate for the phase that’s about to begin. This estimate is very detailed and shows management and the stakeholders what they’re getting for their money during this project phase. In our $80 million project a phased-gate estimate for the current phase may be five million. The monies spent in each phase totals $80 million.

Real World Note: A budget estimate usually has a range of variance of -10% to +25%. So the $80 million project example could actually cost the organization as much as $100 million or as little as $72 million. The definitive estimate for each project phase usually has a very tight range of variance of -5% to +10%. Notice I said “usually”? Your organization might laugh at those percentages and give you a whopping one percent range of variance – or less. Now that’s the real harsh world.

Defining the Project Management Life Cycle

As I know you know, project life cycles are unique to the project. They are not universal to all projects. What is universal to all projects is the project management lifecycle. Yep, I said universal to all projects – from the creation of the pyramids in Egypt to the design of some schmancy software you might be creating right now. All projects live and die by the project management lifecycle.

The project management lifecycle is comprised of five process groups. The bulk of this book focuses on these five process groups and all the fun activities you’ll do in each group as a project manager. Here’s a quick overview of what type of work happens in each of the process groups as you move through the project:

Initiating: Projects are selected, authorized, and chartered. Fascinating.

Planning: Projects demands lots of plans, so you’ll create project management plans through 21 planning processes.

Executing: Once you’ve got all your project plans and project documentation your project team is ready to execute the project work.

Monitoring and Controlling: The project manager has to keep an eye on all the moving parts of the project – that’s what happens in this process group. Control freak!

Closing: Sooner or later the project gets closed. These activities document the project’s performance, the project’s deliverables, and the project’s lessons learned.

As you can see in Figure 1, there are iterations of planning, executing, and monitoring and controlling. Think of a project you’ve worked on in the past. When the project team was executing the work, or a project risk was discovered, or work was done incorrectly, what would do? Well you may have pulled out your hair first, but you would go back to planning. Planning is an iterative process group throughout the project.

The project management lifecycle is universal to all projects, but it does act in conjunction with the project lifecycle. Recall that the project lifecycle is comprised of phases. In a very large project, such as building a skyscraper, the project management lifecycle can be imposed on each phase of the project. This allows for tighter control and forces the project manager to document each phase’s performance before the next project phase is allowed to begin. Nifty.

Related posts:

1. Joseph Phillips: Project Management and the Big Picture
2. Jim Owens PMP: PMBOK still two-phased. Another trap for the unwary
3. Jim Owens: Life After PMP