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Importance of project life cycle
Importance of project life cycle
Importance of project life cycle in project management
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Project planning falls in the Planning Process Group which consists of those processes to establish the projects total scope, define the projects objectives, and courses of action to achieve those objectives. During the planning process, all the documents that are needed to carry the project through the project lifecycle will be developed such as the project management plan. Project management requires repeated feedback loops as additional information becomes available and is better understood. The planning process delineates the strategy, tactics, and path to successfully complete the project. With that, the planning of a project must walk through all the those processes from executing, monitoring and controlling through the closing process. …show more content…
By not understanding what the controlling activities will include, the planning process is incomplete. In today’s environment, the relationship between project planning and project control are critical. When a project has an unforeseen event occur, it can be contributed to a planning failure. This is where control comes in to implement the corrective action. This unforeseen event is now a lesson learned and is considered in the planning of future projects. Therefore, project planning and effective project control is an iterative process as depicted below (PMBOK , …show more content…
This process reviews, approves, and manages all change requests to include organization process assets, project documents, and project management plan through their disposition. The benefit of the integrated change control process is it considers all documented change request in an integrated manner while reducing project risk. Project risk is often contributed by changes made without any consideration of the projects scope, objectives, or plans. If required, a formally chartered Change Control Board (CCB) is established and responsible for reviewing, evaluating, approving, or rejecting changes to a project. Part of the CCB’s responsibility is to record and document the decisions. Approval of change request are dependent upon the complexity, contractual requirements, and the environment in which the project is performed. The figure below identifies the Inputs, Tools & Techniques, and Outputs of Perform Integrated Change
Planning phase involves completion of the project scope plan, WBS, schedule of the project plan, cost and procurement of the project plan. According to the research study, the organizations need to spend a certain amount of time on planning and initiating phase. These plans address the knowledge areas. In this phase, we need to estimate the cost and obtain resources for the project. The team members need to reassess the plan at each and every phase of the project.
Project control mechanisms The entire project people will be divided into a number of teams and each team will be monitored by the expert persons in the areas. In this way, the quality standard could be maintained efficiently and the organizational goal of the project could be achieved easily. As the project will be developed through various stages hence after the completion of each stage the progress report will be analyzed by the project head and necessary actions will be taken to facilitate the easy growth of the project (Saadé, Dong, & Wan, 2015). 11.
Once the product life cycle ends, it is up to the project team to help
The project management plan will help the organization to manage all the foreseeable risks in a timely, proactive, effective, and appropriate manner. The aim of the project management process is to maximize the chances of the project achieving its objectives, while minimizing the risks and keeping them at an acceptable level. The scope and objective of the risk management plan are as follows:
Project Management practice varies considerably from one type of project to another (Payne and Turner, 1999) and its methods are essentially designed for the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to manage activities so as to meet the project objectives (PMI, 2013). A range of different tools, techniques, and approaches are applied to distinct types of projects in order to adapt project management procedures to the specific needs of each project (Crawford et al., 2005). The application of the principles of project management have been considered to be very efficient in the management and control of projects (Murphy and Ledwith, 2007). Project managers tackle different tasks and challenges throughout a project implementation,
Businesses that are project-intensive have to perfect their project planning and scheduling skills in order to ensure maximum utilization of business resources for maximum profitability at the minimum cost. Lack of proper planning and management has meant losses for small businesses, and big companies alike.
Kezner, H. Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. 6th. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc, 1998. Print.
Each of the five phases have different activities that dictate the actions taken within them. For instance, the project initiation phase is normally when teams will form, the project charter will start to be prepared, and the stakeholders and sponsors will be approached. The project planning phase is when the risks, issues, and budget are all defined as well as the completion of teams. There is also a necessary approval of anything else stated in the project at this point. The project execution phase is normally seen as the launch or testing phase.
“Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind” a famous quote about our goal by Seneca. It is a metaphor about the achievement goal and objectives by good planning skills. One has to plan for what one wants to achieve and where one wants to go. One of the most important things is to have good planning, before taking any project the first think you should do is to create project plan. Planning can be defined as preparing a sequence of action to achieve specific goals and objectives. According to Kerzner (2009), “project planning is desirable that the project manager is involved from project conception through execution. It must be systematic, flexible to handle, closely disciplined through reviews and control and capable of accepting multi functional inputs (pg. 412)”. The importance of planning a project is to describe the work so that it will be easily identifiable to the project team member.
According to Zwikael and Globerson (2004), "Faulty planning will result in project failure, whereas high-quality project planning increases the project's chances of success." So the trick for any successful project manager is to have the greatest possible awareness of planning tools, techniques, and methods. While we can utilize many project planning tools in several ways that may be interrelated, or even have similar functions i.e. The Critical Path Method and PERT or the MOSCOW and Agile methods, each process can shine under the proper conditions. The availability of IT and cloud-based systems has also increased the accessibility of many of these methods to include Kanban, Scrum, and various simulations. This wide variety and ready availability make skipping the project planning phase inexcusable.
...ays possible to have changes during the project life cycle. Project manager should be prepared for the changes that will occur in future to run the project smoothly. A change request is formal proposal to modify any document, deliverable or baseline which will include the corrective action, a preventative action or a defect repair. It should be scheduled and implemented by the project team. The approved change request can change the policies, project management plan, procedures, cost or revise the schedules. The request for the change can be direct or indirect, externally or internally intimated and can be optional or legally mandated. Project manager is responsible to determine the changes and will request to the project sponsor. However, the sponsor is the only ones who can accept or deny the changes after they consider all the change factors.
Planning can be used to help the organization map out a way to efficiently achieve their goals. The beginning of the planning process should include analyzing of the current situation. From this information the company can determine the goals and start to outline the steps that need to be taken to ensure that the goal will be met. Other planning activities that should be completed are determining the company’s objectives and were they want to be in the future. This will help them to choose their business objectives and strategies. In addition, the company should look at the resources that they have available and determine if they are sufficient to achieve the organizations goals.
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success,” (Ford, n.d). Ford’s quote and the concept of teamwork in planning are significantly important and prevalent in contemporary planning practices. The importance of a team in planning is imperative in providing a good plan. The team would also advance through the stages of team development. As a result an effective and cohesive team is achieved and there becomes a common goal is produce the paramount result. However, members within an effective team may come into conflicts with ideas or practices. Likely, these conflicts can be resolved with simple strategies. Nevertheless, through all the conflicts within a team group, teamwork still
Project management involves all activities that encompass scheduling, planning, and controlling projects. A successful project manager ensure that an organization’s resources are being used both efficiently and effectively. Most projects need to be uniquely developed require a sense of customization and the ability to adapt to any posed challenges. The scope of effective project management includes defining what the project is and what is being expected to be accomplished. Projects are imposed to fulfill a certain need and project managers must have the ability to create the proper definition. Goals and the means used to attain those goals have to be clearly stated. Project Managers must also have the ability to plan
When planning a new project, how the project will be managed is one of the most important factors. The importance of a managers will determine the success of the project. The success of the project will be determined by how well it is managed. Project management is referred to as the discipline that entails the processes of carefully planning, organizing, controlling, and motivating the organization resources so as to foster and facilitate the achievement of specific established and desired goals and meet the specific criteria of success required in the organization (Larson, 2014). Over the course of this paper I will be discussing and analyzing the importance of project management.