Phases in a Project Life Cycle

The project life cycle represents a sequence of phases that a project takes from the beginning to its end (completion) due to which it achieves the goals and objectives of a project. 

According to PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) published by PMI (Project Management Institute), each standard project has following five major phases that it takes from its starting and end, and that is collectively referred as a project life cycle.

The project life cycle provides the basic foundation of activities or operations that a project should undertake irrespective of the specific work involved.

The Initiation Phase: 

This is the first phase of the project life cycle in which aims, scope, needs or objectives, and primary stakeholders of a project are defined. This initiation phase helps in listing down all possible solutions of a problem and identifying the best possible recommended solution to be followed in a project plan. 

In this phase, the decision for approval of a project must also consider in competitions with other such proposals from different parties who wish to work on a project.

As a result of this phase, a project charter document is developed which authorizes and delegates the project manager to proceed to the detailed planning phase as per scope, and constraints (e.g., allocated budget, time, quality etc.), and proposed solution for a project.

The Planning Phase:

The planning phase is the most important phase among the other 5 phases of the project life cycle. This phase encompasses different activities required to develop a project plan containing complete details of specified deliverable objectives, schedule, budget, resources, and other relevant information to guide the subsequent phase of implementation or development on a project.

The planning phase first determines and analyzes the objectives and goals of the project and based on which appropriate strategies (rules or policies) to achieve them are established.

In this planning phase, a work breakdown structure is created which will define series of all dependent or independent steps to be executed in the execution phase of the project life cycle.

The important outcome of this phase is a project plan which is used in the next phase of execution described below.

The Execution Phase:

This execution phase which is also known as the implementation phase uses the project plan as a guiding reference to produce the project’s actual deliverables as per planned budget, time, and scope.

In this phase, the project manager (PM) as a supervisor, has some responsibilities to be performed during this phase, such as coordination of resources, team management, project plan oversight, and quality assurance.

During this phase, formal management documents are produced that highlight performance data such as quality assurance, procurement, human resource, schedule and cost tracking, and formal information documents for distribution to stakeholders.

The Monitoring & Controlling Phase:

This phase takes place during the actual implementation of the project, which means the phase of monitoring & controlling is run in parallel with the execution phase of a project’s life cycle.

During the execution phase of a project, there may be possibilities of the project’s deviation against the project plan due to different types of risks in a project. Unless the project’s progress is monitored, you cannot be sure that the project will get completed successfully. Therefore, the progress of a project is monitored and controlled for proactively guiding the project towards successful completion. 

This phase defines activities for monitoring and controlling which are used to track project’s progress or project plan and to determine how to react to the observed variance if it occurs in order to get back implementation of a project on track. Sometimes, some changes are needed in the project plan in order to reflect new realities observed during the execution phase.

The Closing Phase:

After the project has been finished or completed, the emphasis of this phase is to release the final deliverables or project to the customer/client or stakeholder, handling project resources & documentation to the business, terminating the contract with suppliers, and communicating the closure of the project to the stakeholders. 

The final steps in this phase are related to the analysis of lesson-learned studies observed during the whole project’s life cycle, which tell about what went well, what didn’t, and what needs improvements. Hence, this type of analysis is documented and transferred back to a project organization so that it may help in future projects of an organization.