Most organisations have a standard project lifecycle, with defines phases and gates, but what are the benifits?
Paul Naybour
LinkedIn ProfilePaul Naybour is a seasoned project management consultant with over 15 years of experience in the industry. As the co-founder and managing director of Parallel, Paul has been instrumental in shaping the company's vision and delivering exceptional project management training and consultancy services. With a robust background in power generation and extensive senior-level experience, Paul specializes in the development and implementation of change programs, risk management, earned value management, and bespoke project management training.
Hi Paul,
How’s this for size – Managed this in around 20 mins. Unfortunately, found that by typing my written answer in, I clarified some of the points which I hadn’t done on the written version (15 mins for a clearly written answer is going to be tricky!). Anyway….
A Project lifecycle allows a project to be considered as a sequence of distinct phases giving the structure and approach to progressively deliver the required outputs. The standards phases of the lifecycle are Concept, definition, Implementation and HO&C. The benefits of using a life cycle are as follows :
1. With defined phases the Project Manager will be able to plan the work for the current and subsequence phases, rather than attempting to plan the whole project accurately in one go. It is always easier to plan a shorter horizon of time, and this is achieved by splitting the work into discrete phases. For examples, for a 5 year project, the Project Manager would only have a vague idea of dates for phases, so would be better placed focusing on the immediate future.
2. With defined phases a level of control can be established which only allows progression to the next phases once a defined criteria has been met. At these authorisation points, the Business Case will be re-reviewed, continued project viability and re-assessment of risks going forward. This is a natural point to stop the project if the reasons to continue do not continue to exist.
3. As each phase has defined output, the project team can focus on the activities required for that phase. This then avoids missed activities and aim to progressive deliver the outputs. For example, in the concept phase, the emphasis should be on the viability and feasibility, rather than team members starting design.
4. By using phases in a lifecycle, specialist resources can be planned to become available when the relevant phase/stage commences. This will make the utilisation of the resources more cost effective. For example, in an IT project, programmers would be required within the Build Stage phase and would not be required for earlier phases.
5. By using phases, the project manager can align payments to the completion of a particular stage/phase. With the control points in place, the reviews will ascertain the completeness of the phase and will therefore allow payment to be authorised. For example, in a house build project, the payment for architectural plans would be identified as only occurring after satisfactory completion of the Design stage of the Implementation phase.
Thanks in advance for any comments.
Regards
Paul
Hi Paul,
A quick attempt:
5 benefits of an organisation using a standard project lifecycle would be:
1) Providing clear definition of the stages the project will go through allows quality criteria to be set for the work at each stage. An organisation can develop standard forms or documents which aid the Project Manager and / or Project Team to deliver this work. This allows better work to be done, at a quicker & more efficient rate than could otherwise be done.
2) Planning of the project will be more effective. A standard lifecycle will provide clarity of the work expected throughout, and this will aid communication with all stakeholders involved with the project. The resources required to deliver the project, and the schedule by which this will be done, can be established and communicated, allowing potential risks and resource constraints to be identified and more easily mitigated against.
3) Allowing relevant knowledge and best practice from similar stages of the project life cycle to be considered and applied to the project’s work. This provides a context for organisational learning, as lessons learnt from reviews and audits can be collated and shared to enhance an organisation’s capability to deliver projects successfully. It can also allow benchmarking to be carried out across organisations and projects.
4) Providing a context for control throughout the project. The Project Manager will be able to work to agreed milestones throughout the project lifecycle by which the progress can be measured and evaluated by the Project Sponsor. This can be used to establish opportunities for engagement with the client(s), and reduces the likelihood of unrealistic expectations being placed upon the project (or upon the Project Manager) by project stakeholders.
5) The use of a standard lifecycle within an organisation also allows programmes to be organised more effectively. There will be increased standardisation of process, and functional skills within an organisation (e.g. planning, scheduling, estimating, risk management) can be applied with greater assurance of quality. Timescales and budgeting across projects can be more easily managed to give visibility to the Programme Manager of issues, risks and / or opportunities.