Phases of Project Management

In your organization, you might be responsible for developing a website. Otherwise, you might be responsible for designing a car. These are just a few examples of projects. Different organizations functioning in different domains take up different types of projects. To ensure the success of any project, effective Project Management is important.

Irrespective of the type of project, the best steps in Project Management are to be followed. To ensure the success of any project, Project Managers should follow the 5-phase Project Management process.

Project Management – The Meaning:

Before delving into phases of Project Management, it is better to gain a basic understanding of what is Project Management. It is a discipline of planning, execution and completion of projects. To manage resources and to guide their teams, Project Managers use a set of tools, processes and methodologies. 

Indeed, many Project Managers these days rely on Project Management tools. Of course, these tools can make your job easier as a Project Manager. Nevertheless, it is better to know about the 5 phases of Project Management.

Why Do Project Management in Phases?

To improve quality and control, Project Management is generally done in phases. In other words, a bigger project is broken down into more stages that are manageable. Each of these phases should have a deliverable planned in a particular order. At the end of each phase, a review should be conducted on the performance of the team and deliverables. When you do this as a project lead, you can understand one thing. You can get to know whether the project can proceed to the next phase or it should undergo revision. Even, it aids with determining how to improve the performance of the team. The five phases of Project Management are together called the project life cycle. 

Pointing Out Five Phases in Project Management:

The steps in Project Management are a combination of activities related to managing a project. These phases often are related to each other in a particular order. Each of these phases comes to an end with a culmination of one or a couple of project deliverables. The five phases are listed below:

1. Project Initiation

2. Project Planning

3. Project Execution

4. Project monitoring and control

5. Project closure

Often organizations follow this set of phases of Project Management to ensure the success of any project. The good thing about each of these phases is that each of them has distinct attention. This focus of a phase can be different from other phases.  Not only focus, the involved stakeholders, organizations, processes, tasks and Project Management skillset requirements will be different even. You can easily add a degree of control within each phase by repeating processes across all process groups. 

Phase 1: Project Initiation:

This is where the project begins. At this stage, your goal should be to define the project extensively. The business case will be the starting point of this phase.  At this phase, you will conduct a study. This study should help you learn whether the project is feasible or not and whether it should be moved further. If you would like to do a feasibility test of the project, this is the right phase to carry it out.

In this initial phase, you should prove that it is a feasible project. You can prove this to the management of the organization through some documents. Here are the details of a few of these documents:

• A business case: It is a document that will explain the objectives of the project and its needs. Even, from this document, your management can know the return they can expect from this project.
• Feasibility Study: This report will give an assurance that it will be possible to complete the project within a reasonable cost and time.
• Project Charter: This document will state what the project is going to deliver.

Project Team Assembling:

In this initial step, you should also assemble the project team. You know that resources are needed for carrying out any project. Before you schedule the project, team formation should be done. When creating a team, you should also identify roles, responsibilities and job descriptions. You can add these details in the project charter after the details are approved by your stakeholders.

Set Up Project Management Office:

Shortly called PMO, this is the physical space for the Project Manager and his support staff. This space will be used for discussions and decisions regarding the project. So, it should have the required infrastructure. Examples of required infrastructure include Project Management software and any other instrument required for the project execution.

Embark Meeting Agenda:

This initial step among the steps in Project Management should come to an end with a meeting. At this meeting, everyone involved in the project including the members, leader and manager should meet with project stakeholders. At this meeting, everyone will agree upon the timeline, scope and goal of the project.

Phase 2: Project Planning:

This stage among the phases of project planning is the key to the successful management of a project. The focus of this stage is to develop a roadmap for every member of the team to follow. This stage should begin with setting up goals. When setting up goals, you can follow either the CLEAR or SMART approach or both:

CLEAR Goals:

This is comparatively a new method to set up goals. It considers the atmosphere of the present fast-paced business operations. Here is what CLEAR stands for:

• Collaborative – It should motivate the team members to work together
• Limited – The goal should be limited in time and scope to ensure its manageability.
• Emotional – The goal should be such that the team members can develop an emotional connection with it. When it is related to their passion, it will be possible to establish this emotional connection. In turn, the quality of work will improve.
• Appreciable: The bigger goal should be split into smaller achievable goals to make it achievable.
• Refinable: As new circumstances show up, the goal should be flexible enough to be refined as required.
   

SMART Goals:

SMART is a method that will help with making sure that the objectives have been vetted thoroughly. Even, it provides a clear way to identify the effects of the goal-setting process. Here is what each letter in SMART means:

• Specific: Your goals should be specific. When setting goals, you should find answers to questions like why, which, when, where, what and who.
• Measurable: The goal should be measurable as well. Here, it would be wise to create criteria that you can use for measuring success.
• Attainable: Find the most crucial goals and make sure to identify the ways to achieve them.
• Realistic: Irrespective of the nature of the project, it is important that you should set realistic goals.
• Timely: Also, you should create a time frame to achieve the goal.
   

When you are at this stage, you should follow the phases of project planning.  Also, at this phase, you should define the project scope and Project Management plan. You should create a realistic timetable, know the available resources, quality and cost. Also, you should develop performance measures and should establish baselines. You should generate these things with the help of the cost, schedule and scope of the project. A baseline will help you identify whether the project stays on track.

When you are at this stage, responsibilities and roles are defined clearly. In turn, everyone involved knows what they are accountable for. You will create the following documents at this phase to make sure that the project stays on track:

• Scope Statement: This is a document that defines the needs of a business. Even, it will explain the deliverables, objectives and benefits of the project along with key milestones. When the project moves on, the scope statement can change. However, this change should happen only with the approval of the project sponsor or Project Manager.
   
• Work Breakdown Schedule: Shortly called WBS, this document is the visual representation. Its purpose is to split the scope of the project into sections that are easy to manage for the team.
   
• Milestones: This document will help with identifying high-level goals that should be met all through the project and encompass them in the Gantt Chart.
   
• Gantt Chart: This document is a visual timeline that you can employ for planning out tasks and for visualizing the timeline of the project.
   
• Communication Plan: Let us consider that your project has stakeholders out of your organization. In this case, the right communication plan in written form is important. You should develop a proper plan for communication around the project. Also, there should be a schedule on when to converse with the members of the team based on milestones and deliverables.
   
• Risk Management Plan: This plan will help with finding all risks that you can foresee. Some of the common risks encompass estimates of costs, unrealistic time, changing requirements, budget cuts, customer review cycle, lack of committed resources and changing requirements.

Phase 3: Project Execution:

Among the 5 phases of Project Management, the third phase is the stage where your team follows your plans. At this stage, you will spend most of your time coordinating with people. You will update stakeholders, keep track of resources and help your team  ensure quality work.

During this stage of Project Management, some of the documents you will handle are work orders, documentation of the minutes of the meetings and documentation of quality assurance.

As the project starts at this phase, you will start discovering new information. So, at this phase, you will have to revisit and update your Project Management plan. At the project execution phase, you should be cautious about change requests. If any adjustments are really essential, you should ensure that they are properly managed.

Phase 4: Project Monitoring and Control:

Some organizations follow project monitoring and control as a separate phase. But, most organizations combine them with the project execution phase. The  reason is that monitoring and control should be done right from the initial project phase. Whenever teams execute their project plan, they should start monitoring their own progress. 

With constant monitoring, you can prevent scope creep. When you are at this phase, you should calculate key performance indicators. Then, you should also take variations from allotted time and cost. With constant vigilance, you can make sure that the project moves forward smoothly.

Phase 5: Project Closure:

This is the final phase in the five phase of Project Management. It denotes the closing of the project after final delivery. For some projects, some external talents are to be hired on contract. So, when the project ends, these contracts are also to be closed. Necessary paperwork is to be completed concerning these hirings. At this final stage of the Project Management lifecycle, as a Project Manager, you should take care of these things.

Also, at this phase, most organizations decide to conduct a reflection meeting. During this meeting, they converse on the positive and negative outcomes of the project. This is an effective approach to make sure of ongoing organizational improvement. In turn, the overall productivity of the team will improve in the future.

The final task of a Project Manager at this phase is to review the whole project. He/she should prepare a detailed project report covering every aspect. Also, you should store all data related to the project in a secured space. In turn, you can access them for any clarifications and models you need for future projects.  

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Conclusion:
All projects go through these five steps in Project Management. These steps will work irrespective of the size of the project. Dividing a project into phases is an excellent move to gain the focus of your team. Even, it will help with planning resource allocation rightly. These stages have proven to be successful in Project Management irrespective of the niche of operation. It will not be an overstatement to say that nowadays, Project Management tools have made things easier including Project Management phases for project leads and managers.