Project Life Cycle

Description

 

Project Life Cycle Template

Project management involves keeping track of your product template from start to end by avoiding wasting time, resources, and money.

With the project’s complexity, the phases and the requirements may change, but there are a few steps that you might need to follow.

What is Project Life Cycle?

Series of steps or the phases from the start to the closure is considered as the project life cycle template. Therefore, each job within an organization must be determined by its life cycle and based on its need for high-level project goals.

Find out here what the project management life cycle is.

The life cycle of a project usually has the following characteristics:

• Its life cycle phases are in sequence.
• Getting results while moving from one stage to the other.
• The reports of a stage must be approved before moving to the next one.

Within the life cycle of a template is its direction, which works within each of its phases.

 

Project Life Cycle is a process or a method that managers usually stick to while completing any task. The life cycle has a series of phases.

In addition, the breakdown of tasks into separate phases helps to manage the work better and have complete control over it. However, it is essential to mention that each service has its life cycle but follows the same stages. For this reason, what we will address below will be helpful to you regardless of the characteristics of your product.

What are the 4 stages of the project life cycle?

Phase 1: Start of the Project

This is the first step of a life cycle. It is where the value of the plan is calculated.

This is the evaluation of the project goals, a schedule, and the costs involved to determine if the plan should be conducted. It balances the requirements with its resources and availability to see if continuing the work makes sense for the organization’s life cycle.

The type of work teams abandons when projects are framed as unprofitable or unfeasible. However, a life cycle that passes both tests may be assigned to a trained team.

Phase 2: Planning

A solid plan is required to guide the work team when the project is approved. Moreover, to execute it on time and within the proposed budget. A well-designed, written life cycle plan guides obtaining resources, financing, and acquiring the necessary inputs.

It is about creating a complete set of strategies that establish a clear project roadmap regarding quality, costs, risk breakdown structure, obstacles, benefits, life cycle scope, and work schedule.

Phase 3: Project Execution

Once the planning phase has been executed and based on it, it will be necessary to conduct the scheduled activities with their respective tasks and proceed to the delivery of the products.

It is essential to ensure effective communication in this phase to guarantee greater control over the process based on deadlines and resources.

At this stage, steps must be managed to avoid risks, changes of events, costs and expenses, resources, time, and upgrades or modifications.

The implementation of a life cycle will depend on the planning phase.

This phase includes all those processes necessary for the follow-up, review, and monitoring of each process.

This phase is executed to detect potential problems as quickly as possible. Moreover, to identify the areas of the life cycle in which a change in planning may be required. The monitoring and control stage of the life cycle is naturally associated with the execution phase.

Therefore, to guarantee the delivery of the end product, the team in charge must calculate performance indicators and track variations in the cost and the time allocated to each activity. This constant approach helps keep the project on track with as minor inconvenience as possible.

Phase 4: Closure Stage Project management

In this phase, the team in charge considers the project finished when it is delivered to the client and with the communication to the interested parties and releasing resources for other products if any.

 

What does each stage of the cycle look like?

The startup phase defines those processes needed to start a new project. In addition, it determines which feature product it should conduct at the right time.

Startup Phase:

The startup phase is composed of two main activities:

• Develop a project charter
• Identify the stakeholders

The stakeholder register is part of project management process groups and also it is helpful in tasks such as the planning process.

Planning Phase:

There is a series of plans that will eventually guide you from the execution to the closure stage phase. Thus this is the part of the planning phase where we try to determine such purposes and the project objective.

Execution Phase:

The execution phase consists of activities involved in the whole process. Moreover, this phase takes the longest time, the most energy, and resources. The action taken at runtime can affect the project management plan or documents.

The critical tasks at runtime are:

• Execute project management plans
• Direct and manage project execution
• Make task assignments
• Conduct progress meetings

The result may require a new base definition and updates to the existing requirements during the runtime.

Monitoring the results complies with the project management plan before the end stage.

The primary reason for stage project management is to identify any changes made by the project management plan point to determine preventive action against any unexpected results.

Closure Phase:

The closing phase is the process that performs a controlled closing of the project at the end.

A project retrospective serves both to review the success of the project and can be used for future products. Of course, projects will never go smoothly, and there will always be things to learn that will facilitate the success of the product.

• Analyze the performance: Try to check whether the project goals are completed or not (budget-friendly task and on time) and if the initial process was resolved with a checklist prepared for this purpose.
• Analyze team performance: Evaluation of the crew member’s performance, for instance, whether they have completed their objectives with good quality of work and time management.
• Document Closeout: Ensure that you have provided a report to the key stakeholders of the complete project with no strings attached.
• Conduct Post-Implementation Reviews: Now is the time for the full and final analysis, where the management will ensure the project completion. Moreover, if there is anything to learn for future projects or not.
• Evaluate Resources: Now determine if any resources allocated for the current projects are unused. Moreover, if any resources are left unused, those can be used in the future.

Management Ethics of code and conduct

Eventually, you will come across the project management ethics of the code and conduct that deals with various human behavioral aspects, such as

• Responsibility
• Respect
• Equity
• Honesty
• Cultural competence

This code is practiced in building trust and bringing a typical picture of behavior to the project manager.

Why is the Project life cycle template important?

The project life cycle template represents a global vision of the phases in which a project template is connected.

In this sense, it helps to ensure that different teams working on the same project template can have visibility on the interactions between their work and that of others and, therefore, better coordinate their efforts concerning different priorities,

The phases are important because they group the activities to produce important project template deliverables or achieve certain objectives.

The life cycle template is useful in planning and allows you to identify the key moments to conduct checks and verify the achievement of the expected results.

This way of representing the work helps maintain a high concentration on the objectives agreed upon with the client, while a more detailed representation can be useful when the work to be conducted must be agreed upon with the resources.

Therefore, a project life cycle template can well describe the steps of the project template.

Each initiative requires that the activities conducted have a precise progression.

Preliminary steps must take place before the work starts, then there is the sequence of planned processes, and finally, the test and delivery activities before the work can be considered finished.

It is essential for the company that management knows these steps and the details. This is useful for them to feel empowered by understanding the impact of their work on that of others and the discomfort that may be created in the face of delays.

Furthermore, in communicating with the project’s key stakeholders, they will not be so interested in the details of the work as in the progress of the salient phases. And therefore, it is to these that attention must be drawn.

Therefore, the life cycle template is a way to focus on what is important for the client and involve the whole team in the agreed objectives.

 

Key Features of Project Life-Cycle Template

The project can be seen as a set of activities, but it can also be seen as a series of realizations that, taken as a whole, are templates of the predefined result of the project itself.

Typical characteristics have been identified in the current project’s template, which are:

An impulse: initiating the life cycle through a decision-making moment, which pre-defines the result of the project.

Constraints: The project’s life cycle template is defined in the presence of limits on usable resources, cost, and qualitative limits.

Uniqueness: the project template has something new and not repeatable in some aspects, such as the result, the type of resources used, the client, the working method, and the relationship between the cost/effectiveness of the development.

Inter-functionality: the need to bring together different organizational-functional areas, disciplines, and professions towards the same result, involving them in a collective effort that involves a high degree of interdependence.

Asynchrony: except in exceptional cases, the activities of a life cycle template are not marked by some rhythm, nor do the system follow, by their nature, external rhythms (for example, the annual rhythm of the company budget).

 

In the project life cycle, the project manager must ensure that all moving parts are always heading in the right direction and in a coordinated manner. If adjustments to the project life cycle need to be made due to unforeseen circumstances or a change of direction, now would be the time.

During the follow-up life cycle phases, project managers may need to do the following:

• Manage resources
• Monitor project performance
• Manage the risks
• Update project schedule
• Modify the project schedule

At the end of this phase, the client must complete and accept all agreed project deliverables.

 

Phases of Project Life Cycle Template

There are five phases of the life cycle template:

• Project initiation stage project life
• Project Planning stage
• Project Execution stage
• Control and finalization

 

How can I write the Project Life-cycle template?

In this project life cycle template, you can place the different processes with your product or project proposals in the corresponding cycle project life phase template.

Start with a simplified version and not include each process’s inputs and outputs but link each process with the next.

Another recommendation is that for those processes that you consider key or strategic, write them in another color or mark them to stand out from the rest. It will help you focus on what you are analyzing and detect the main points on which you should work on your sustainable strategy.

Understanding the phases of a template will help you and any small or medium business owner see it through successfully from start to finish.

However, if the phases are not implemented correctly, despite having understood their importance, it is advisable to seek external help through project management template software or experts in the field.

Remember that everything you propose in your company or with your brand is possible to achieve. It is enough to know how to organize and have clear objectives and goals, especially how to achieve them.