Project Life Cycle Diagram
The Project Life Cycle is a series of activities which are essential for accomplishing project objectives or targets. Projects may have different dimensions and difficulty level, but, whatever the size: large or small, may be all projects could be mapped to the given lifecycle structure. This life cycle for the project includes four phases-
Project Life Cycle Diagram
We will first look into Initiation Phase
Initiation phase defines those processes that are required to start a new project. The purpose of the project initiation phase is to determine what the project should accomplish.
This phase mainly composed of two main activities
All the information related to the project are entered in the Project Charter and Stakeholder Register. When the project charter is approved, the project becomes officially authorized.
The Project Charter defines the project's main elements
This document allows a project manager to utilize organizational resources for the sake of the project. To create a project charter, the inputs required will be enterprise environment factor, business case, agreements, a project statement of work and organizational process assets.
A stakeholder can influence the success and failure of the project. To note down the information about the stakeholder, a Stakeholder Register is used.
The stakeholder register will have information like
The other activities involved in initiating process group are:
The stakeholder register and project charter are used as inputs to the other development groups such as planning process group.
Project Planning phase covers about 50% of the whole process. Planning phase determines the scope of the project as well as the objective of the project. It begins with the outputs of initiation phase (charter, preliminary scope statement, and project manager). The output of the planning phase serves as the input for the execution phase.
The important aspects of planning process are
For any successful project WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) is important. Following are steps to create WBS.
Plan Scheduling is the process of establishing the procedure, policies and documentation for planning, managing, executing and controlling the project schedule. The inputs in these activities include
The output of the Planning Schedule Management includes
Defining Activities is the procedure for documenting and identifying specific actions to be performed to produce the project deliverables.
In define activities, each work packages is broken down into individual work schedule activities. The inputs of the defining activities include
While the outputs of these activities are
Sequence activities is nothing but logically organizing the output of "define activities". It determines the order in which the activities needs to be performed.
The main output from the sequence activity process is "Network Diagram".
Network diagram is nothing but posting the task on a board in a logical order.
For example, you want to start a business in foreign country what will be your list of activities and what will be the order it should be done?
You will perform activities in these order
This stage explains the process of estimating the work effort and resources required to complete the task. The other factor that has to be considered at this stage is the availability of the resources.
While estimating resources, the focus should be on the longest path of the plan (Critical Path), which going to consume more time and money.
You have to estimate resources for two tasks
Make sure that your critical tasks are accurately estimated (completion time).
There are five inputs used to estimate activity resources
The output of this stage is
NOTE: All the activity that is done so far (define activities + sequence activities + Estimate activity resources) is going to help in "Develop Schedule."
Estimating Activity Duration is the process of estimating the number of work periods (weeks/months) required to complete the individual task with estimated resources. This step defines how much time an individual task will take to complete.
You cannot calculate activity duration without calculating the work effort and resources required to complete the task. Estimating process should be done in this order
To estimate activity durations, you need inputs
While there are two main outputs
This technique is also referred as PERT (Project Evaluation and Review Techniques) estimates.
Develop Schedule is the process of analyzing activity sequences, resource requirements, durations and schedule constraints to create the project schedule model. For scheduling each task, three main factors are taken into consideration
Using these factors project calculates the start date and finish date for each task.
A scheduling software can be used to create a schedule. It generates a schedule model with planned dates for completing project activities.
The input of this tool includes
The output from this would be
The last stage of the planning phase is Control Schedule. It is the process of monitoring the status of project activities to update project process and manage changes to the schedule baseline.
If changes are required to the schedule, they must go through the change control process. The schedule should be managed or controlled by manager proactively.
There are four main outputs of control schedule process
There are five outputs of control schedule
The executing phase consists of those activities that are defined in project management plan. This process involves managing stakeholder expectations, coordinating with people and resources, as well as performing other activities related to project deliverables.
During the execution phase, the result may require re-baselining and updates to existing project requirements. Action taken in execution phase may affect the project management plan or documents.
This stage consumes most of the project cost, time, and resources as this is the process that produce project deliverables.
There are four inputs to Direct and Manage Project Execution
While there are five outputs
During this stage, expert's judgments, meetings, and reporting KPI (Key Performance Indicators) are of prime importance.
Performing Quality Assurance is the process of auditing the quality requirements and the results from quality control measurements. It is the process of recording and monitoring results of the quality activities to assess performance. Various tools like control charts, cost-benefit analysis, flowcharting, run charts, scatter diagrams, inspection & reviews, etc., can be used for this process.
The main input to this is
While, the output of this is
During the execution phase, project team acquiring takes place, this is because it is more likely that individuals with different skill set will be required during the process.
There are three main inputs to acquire project team
While there are three outputs
The majority of human resource processes involves in executing process, developing project team is also a part of it. The main purpose of developing project team is to improve the overall performance of team members. This stage must start early on in the project.
The inputs in project development team include
Output of this process include
Managing project team is one of the important parts of project management. It is the most complex area of project management because many times managers would not be in direct contact with team members, in such situation to analyze their performance and deciding their remuneration becomes difficult.
There are five inputs to manage project team process
There are four main outputs
Out of three communication attributes, one falls in the execution process. In communication management program, there are three main communication aspects that need to monitor.
The input of managing communications include
The output of this stage would be
In this stage, there are two main roles involved the buyer and the seller. During the procurement process the activities involved are
The output of the procurement process include
While, you will have six outputs
This stage includes actively managing stakeholders throughout the project. To avoid unexpected project delay or abandoning the project in between, stakeholder expectation is identified and quickly resolved.
There are five inputs to manage stakeholder process
The output of this process include
Project Phase Review
At the end of execution phase, project phase review is done. It helps you to document in following activities
After execution phase, to check the project is on right track, monitoring and controlling phase becomes active. During this phase various changes and reviews to enhance the project performance is done.
This stage involves tracking, reviewing and regulating the progress in order to meet the objective of the project. It also ensures that the deliverables are according to the project management plan. The main focus of this step is to identify any changes made from the point of project management plan to determine appropriate preventive action.
The inputs for this stage include
While the output includes
It is one of the most important process of project management. It is in this stage where the impact of any change is assessed against the project. If a change in this stage occurs at any one part of a project, the whole project will be assessed. It is better to implement changes at an early stage of the project, because as the project progresses, the cost of implementing changes also increases.
The input of this stage includes
While the outputs are
Validating scope involves verifying whether the deliverables meet the customer acceptance criteria. The external checking with the customer or stakeholders are part of Validating Scope Management.
The inputs for validating scope includes
While the output of the scope validation includes
Control scope ensures that it is the only work identified as being in scope that is delivered. The actual result is compared against the scope baseline and ensures that all of the approved scope is in fact being delivered.
The inputs to control scope process includes
While the output includes
Control Schedule process helps you in many ways. It helps you to capture current schedule status, determine the variance from the schedule baseline, understand the nature of the variance and respond by taking appropriate action.
If changes are needed to the schedule then they must go through the change control process, the change should be re-evaluated and only then it should be used to update the schedule baseline.
There are four main inputs to the control schedule
The output includes
Control cost is comparing baseline cost for each deliverable against the actual cost. The cost baseline should change only in response to a change request that has gone through the Perform Integrated Change Control process. Control cost ensures that your project stay within funding limitations.
The inputs for the Control Cost include
The output for this include
The control quality ensures that the project and product are delivered with the quality management plan. It ensures that whether the work is performed correctly. The major output of the control quality is Quality management plan. While the other information that will be helpful are
There are four main outputs from the perform quality control process:
Control communication ensures that the right information reaches to the stakeholder. Control communication information includes inputs, tools and techniques and output that belong to this process.
Control communication can be in any format, it can be
In control communication process, work information is taken from various other processes, and the performance report is used as an input for various monitoring and managing processes. The main deliverables from the control communication process is the performance record.
Throughout the project cycle, risk analysis is a continuous process. It is important that you continuously analyze, identify and respond to risks. The activities include in control risk are
The input for control risk are
The output for the control risk are
Out of four procurement plan, the third process of procurement falls in Monitoring & Executing process group. This stage involves monitoring the vendor's performance and ensuring that all contract requirements are being met.
The control procurement process involves verifying
The major input for procurement process are
The output for procurements are
Many project stumble due to inadequate management of stakeholders. If the stakeholders are managed properly, there are more chances for project success. In this process, we monitor the current engagement level of stakeholders and take actions accordingly.
The input and output for all these activities include
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Closing phase is the process that performs a controlled shut down of the project at the end. In a project, there are three closure activities that are going on
The inputs for this process include
The output of this process include
For each project development life cycle phase- planning, executing, monitoring and controlling & closing there is one procurement process. The final closing procurement is done as per the contract between the seller and buyer.
The closing activities and deliverables include:
The input for closing procurement include
While the output include
Project Management Ethic of code and conduct
In the end, you will come across project management ethic of code and conduct which deals various human behavioral aspects such as
This code is practiced to induce the confidence and bring a common frame of behavior in the project manager.
Initiation phase defines those processes that are required to start a new project. It defines what project should accomplish in due course of time.
The initiation phase mainly composed of two main activities
The stakeholder register and project charter are also useful in other process groups of project management like planning process.
Planning phase determines the scope as well as the objective of the project. It involves creating a set of plans that guides you through the execution and closure phases of the project.
The executing phase consists of those activities that are defined in project management plan. It is the longest phase of the project life cycle and consumes maximum energy and resources. Action taken in execution phase may affect the project management plan or documents.
Key task in execution phase are
During the execution phase, the result may require re-baselining and updates to existing project requirements.
Monitoring and controlling stage ensures that the deliverables are according to the project management plan before closing phase.
The main focus of this phase is to identify any changes made from the point of project management plan to determine preventive action against any unexpected result.
Closing phase is the process that performs a controlled shut down of the project at the end.