Chapter 2

• Project life cycle


  A framework designed to help project managers guide their projects successfully from start to finish
• Project initiation stage


  1. Define project goals

  2. Evaluate feasibility

  3. Establish the project's purpose and stakeholders
• Project initiation stage


  • Meet with clients and stakeholders to understand their goals, motivations and hopes for the project
  • Hash out the high-level goals that must be met for the project to be considered a success
  • Lots of research, discovery and discussion, but very little detailed planning
• Key project management steps for the initiation stage


  1. Identifying project objectives and deliverables

  2. Outlining project risks, dependencies, constraints and priorities

  3. Establishing project scope based on deadlines and available resources

  4. Submitting a project proposal for approval

  
• Project planning stage


  Create a comprehensive project plan outlining tasks, timelines and resource allocation

  
• Key activities in the project planning stage


  1. Translating proposal into a series of actionable tasks and scheduling them in a project roadmap

  2. Documenting processes or workflows that the team will use

  3. Creating measurable short-term goals from high-level project goals

  4. Addressing potential issues that could derail the roadmap

  
• Project roadmap


  Outlines all of the start and end dates of every major project task and big milestones
• Gantt charts


  • Show the duration and timing of a number of dependent tasks
  • Useful for planning, scheduling and monitoring progress
• Project execution stage


  Put the project plan into action, ensuring effective communication and coordination among team members
• Project execution stage


  • Majority of the project work takes place
  • Requires constant monitoring
  • Expect to adjust goals and roadmap as the project progresses

  
• Key responsibilities of the project manager in the execution stage

  1. Monitor and control the execution process, reviewing the quality of the team's output

  2. Adjust and update tasks, goals and deadlines to meet changing conditions

  3. Communicate between the team and the project stakeholders

  4. Create status reports to communicate execution progress
• Project monitoring & controlling stage


  Track project progress, identify any deviations and make necessary adjustments
• Project closure stage


  1. Hand off deliverables

  2. Release team members and project resources

  3. Analyze project performance in a project retrospective
• Project retrospective


  Review the success of the project and extract learnings that can apply to future projects
• Projects will never go without obstacles and there will always be things to learn that will ease the progress of other projects
• Project closure stage


  • Analyze the performance of the team, based on the quality of their work and how well they were able to meet deadlines
• A project manager's role includes managing resources, defining scope, creating schedules, developing budgets, communicating with stakeholders, and monitoring progress.