Projects each have a lifecycle based around the needs of the project and its desired outcomes. Selecting the right lifecycle for a project is critical and helps sets up the project for success right from the start. Projects usually fall into three possible broad lifecycles – predictive, agile or a hybrid mix. Typical project lifecycles for predictive projects include Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring & Controlling, & Closing. Typical project lifecycles for Agile projects include Envisioning, Speculating, Exploring, Adapting, & Closing.
Understanding these lifecycles and how to use and manage them through the life of the project is the role of the project manager.
Predictive or plan-driven lifecycles are predictable as the name suggests, and thus follow a plan. Changes are discouraged, and when necessary are tightly controlled with the main aim to be ‘sticking to the plan’.
The project manager makes use of baselines for cost and schedule and the projects’ performance is constantly measured against these baselines. Where a project drifts from expected baselines, the project manager will address the issue in an appropriate manner, with the aim to get the project back on track. This may take the form of fast-tracking, schedule crashing, data analysis or other common project management techniques.
Within a predictive lifecycle, changes to the project are discouraged. All possible project changes are analysed with regards to their affect on the key project metrics – cost, schedule & quality. All changes to a predictive project are assessed and approved or rejected by a change control board. This is a group of nominated individuals who best represent the projects goals and objectives. If a change is approved, the project manager will focus on integration management of this change, and ensuring that the change is properly integrated into project knowledge areas, thus forming new approved project baselines. These new baselines become the yardstick by which project performance is measured.
At the conclusion of all predictive lifecycle projects there are formal closing processes that ensure a range of important processes are finished up, including procurement, documentation updates, lessons learned, organisational process asset updates, updates to organisational templates/know-how/wiki’s, & post implementation reviews. In this way the project is closed in a full & meaningful way ensuring customer satisfaction, and all learnings are captured and used for the betterment of the organisations & individuals involved.
