Project Life Cycle Flowchart
The project life cycle is a process designed to work within an organization's operational and management structure. In the IT industry, projects primarily result from service or software upgrades, new service rollouts, and service retirements. The diagram below depicts the relationship between project management and service management; projects result from and are impacted by service management. The methodology is designed to apply to both small and large-scale projects. Download a PDF of the diagram.
The documents indicated throughout the process are available as downloadable templates, which are designed to communicate important concepts related to the project, gain consensus, achieve objectives, and ready project deliverables for operations.
Project Initiation
Projects can be initiated for any number of reasons, but they are normally a result of an expressed business need or business case. Staff, managers, directors, or senior level administrators may express these needs in formal or informal ways. Regardless of how they are initially expressed, articulating the needs in the form of a proposal helps decision-makers evaluate the need for project and decide on the best approach to attaining its stated objectives.
The proposal is distributed to the appropriate stakeholders and vetted; additional analysis (financial or otherwise) may be required to make a decision about whether to approve the project. If the project aligns with the organization's strategic objectives, resources are available, or the priority is sufficiently high, the project is approved. Before the project is ready to start, a scope statement should be drafted and approved by the appropriate sponsor(s). This document articulates what will and will not be included in the project, and provides additional detail to further organize the project. In addition, it is extremely helpful to depict stakeholder and team member roles and responsibilities before moving into the next phase. This can be done in written or graphic form.
Project Management
The project management phase includes discovery, planning, execution, and closure. At regular intervals throughout the project, the project manager submits status reports to the stakeholders, which identify project risks and document progress and upcoming activities or milestones. In addition, project-specific documents may be needed for the project. These may include a Statement of Work (SOW), Request for Information, and/or Request for Proposal (not pictured).
Discovery
During discovery, the project team documents the project requirements. This is an important step in helping to ensure project success.
Planning & Execution
During the planning stage, the project team develops a project plan or work breakdown structure (WBS). This can be developed using any number of tools, including Microsoft(r) Project, OmniPlan, an Excel(r) spreadsheet, or other type of document. What is important is to document the major and minor tasks involved in accomplishing the project deliverables and objectives. If more detail is desired, the plan may indicate resources assigned to the tasks, required dates, and dependencies.
Developing and following a communication plan is an essential part of any successful project. Project management is all about communication, and this plan documents what will be communicated about the project, to whom, how, and when.
Depending on the project, a test plan may be developed.
The execution stage involves "working the plans." The activities articulated in each of the project documents are performed, and deliverables produced.
Closure
Closure activities involve confirming the product or service is ready the for normal operations (service management); preparationsi for these activities should begin during the execution stage of the project. In terms of the service provided, the responsibilities of both the customer and the service provider are documented in an SLA. A corresponding OLA is the service provider's internal document, which spells out how technical support for the service is provided within the organization or between two service providers. For projects associated with existing services, existing SLA's or OLAs may exist, and need to be revised to reflect any changes brought about by the project.
A service book is a tool used by the service operations organization to document the processes associated with service maintenance. In order to prepare for project closure, project managers should consult and coordinate with this group, to ensure that the service book is prepared and ready when the project comes to an end.
In addition to the above, it can be extremely helpful at the close of a project to discuss lessons learned. This can be informal discussions with individual team members, stakeholders, or sponsors, or a group "plus/delta" discussion around What went well? What would we change? Through this exercise, project managers and team members alike can gain a better understanding of what works well (and what doesn't) on a particular type of project.