Project Life cycle

Project management plays an important role in achieving a successful project as it manage the project according the schedule and budget. According to Schwalbe (201 1), project life cycle defined as a collection of project phases, development, implementation and close-out. There are five important steps in developing project life cycle namely defining project goal, planning project, executing project, closing project and lastly, evaluating the project (refer to Figure 1 in Appendix). Firstly, project manager define the project goal.
Project goal is the first step as it set the objectives and purposes of the project. The goal focus on provide business value to the organisation. The goal should give a clear focus and drives the other phases for the project team. Moreover, in this phase, project manager identify the business problem and define a solution regarding it. According to Westland (2006), business case includes a detailed description of the problem, the availability of alternatives solutions, analysis of business benefits, costs, risks and issues, a preferred solution and an implementation’s summarized plan.
Then, a feasibility study is run to assess each alternative solution option and its benefits, also reasonable forecast cost, risks nd identified issues are discussed. After approval of previous task, term of references are created and established. It define the vision, objectives, scope, and deliverables of the project and identify any risks, issues, assumptions and constraints. Then the project team is decided. This task is important as a successful project rely on the project team.

Project manager plays role by creates a detailed Job description and choose project team based on their skills and knowledge. From the project goal, a project can be determined its success based on given time, money and resources invested. After defining the project goal, project manager plan the project. Project planning is crucial as the performance throughout the project is based on it. First, a project plan is created based on work breakdown structure (WBS). In WBS, the resources are allocated, provide detailed project scheduled and sequence the activities and tasks.
After the project team has been decided, the team discuss the project based on things to do, how to make the project runs smoothly, cost assumption, type of resources need and time taken to complete the project. After that, deliverables, tasks resources, and time of completion of each tasks for each hase are defined. During planning phase, project team must agree upon the list of scope, schedule and budget. The team then create a resource plan to identify the labour, equipment, materials, software and hardware use in the project.
To achieve a successful project, financial plan is important as it need to be within the budget given and enables the project manager measures the forecast spend of the project. At this point, potential risks and actions need to be taken in risk plan to avoid any error and solve a problem later in the next phase. Furthermore, the project must meet user requirements to gain user acceptance. To inform the stakeholders progress of the project, team member need to decide communication in communication plan and for each of the team member to distribute information.
Lastly, a contract with suppliers is a need for having a clear idea of suppliers’ role and delivery expectation. The third stage in developing project is to execute the project plan. During this stage, work out the project in accord to the gran ed t task and activities in earlier stage. According to Schwalbe (201 1), the output of project such as product or services are produced and presented to the customer for sign off and the xecution phase is typically the longest phase in the project as it consumes the most effort and most resources.
A good project is aimed at achieving the project aims and need, on time and within budget. Thus, aspects such as scope, schedule, budget and resources are properly handled throughout the phase. In the interim of plan execution, the project manager need to carry out a range of management processes such as identified the change management, risks management and issues management, assured the deliverable quality and measuring all the deliverable produced against the listed criteria (Westland, 2006). Subsequently, established the comparison of the product and baseline plan in earlier stage.
After that, document the information and handed the report to the project manager through the regular team meetings. With these steps finished, a phase review is undertaken where the reported information are analysed carefully by the project manager. This is a checkpoint to make sure the product and services has achieved the goals and customer need before proceeds to next stage. The fourth step in developing project is to close the project. This stage includes a formally documentation and implementation of a project close report. Before the project closure, project checking is carry out as an extra insured.
Westland (2006) stated that the, project close out is include ensuring all the project completion criteria have met and identified any outstanding project activities, task, risks or issues. Next, present the products to the sponsor and obtains formally acknowledge of acceptance on the delivered product or services. Finally, the project checking is completed. Based on the report, the project manager need to create the project closure report which consist of specifically document on all undertaken activities and delivered to the clients for approval Schwalbe, 2011).
Once, the activities stated in the report are approved, the granted activities are execute. The project closure report is ended only when all the propose activities are fully implemented. Finally, the project closure stage ended when the project manager hand over the project documentation to the business, cancelling all suppliers’ contracts, releasing staff, equipment and resources, and lastly inform the closure of the project to all stakeholders and interested parties.
In the final stage, the project is evaluated. After the project has been close, post-mortem is conducted to evaluate the overall project. The projects are evaluated in two categories: project team evaluation and project evaluation. The project team evaluation is performed by passing a team and peer evaluation form to the team member and each of them are required to Judge the other team member. The rate are based on the overall attitude and contribution of the member in the project.
The evaluation result will be used as a revised is used as a revised of payroll. On the contrary, Schwalbe (2011) stated that the project is evaluated based on how well the product or services performed against the stated objectives and conformed to the management processes outlined in the lanning phase. Lastly, Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development (2005) suggested that a review of on the project should be conduct to reflect the mistake and identify impact and lessons learnt for future projects.