Project Lifecycles

00:05 By now, you should be feeling confident about the project lifecycle.

00:10 Each project begins with initiation, moves on to planning, then execution with the monitoring and control phase being performed simultaneously.

00:18 And it finishes up with the closure phase.

00:21 Does that mean that all projects go through these phases? Well, yes.

00:26 But do they always have these exact names? That would be a no.

00:31 Projects are unique in their nature.

00:33 You remember that, right? So while the logical flow outlined here fits every project, how you label these phases depends on the specific project you are working on.

00:44 Often the planning, especially the execution phase, is broken down in different stages according to the project.

00:51 Specificity. Let's look at a project for the development of a brand new product. Remember our Bluetooth? yoyo. Let's use that.

01:01 The full phases in this kind of project which use the labels definition, design, development and then deployment.

01:09 Let's look at these in more detail and see why this framework is the best fit here instead of the one we are already familiar with.

01:18 This is what you need to do for a Bluetooth yoyo product.

01:21 First, define the product and what it needs to achieve.

01:25 In other words, you define the goal.

01:28 For our yo yos.

01:29 We want to develop a product that appeals to young people combining a popular toy and useful device to create a new trend, giving young people an extra level of creativity. Then comes design.

01:43 How will we make this product? What will its features be? For example, it needs to be visually appealing.

01:50 It also needs to be a well functioning yoyo and speaker simultaneously, as well as customizable, durable, and having a good battery life.

02:00 What are we deciding on here? That's right here.

02:03 We're talking about scope.

02:07 Then comes developing and building a prototype.

02:10 And once we've built a working yoyo speaker, gained the funding we need and proved there's a strong need for the product, then we can deploy it, or in other words, put it to mass production.

02:21 This is our execution phase.

02:25 So while, ah, your project still has its own personal life cycle, its phases can always be linked to a phase in our theoretical framework.

02:34 This is what stays constant for any project.

02:36 Makes sense, doesn't it? Just to make this crystal clear, consider another type of project, a process improvement project, which uses a specific type of framework.

02:48 This time the project starts with an as-is analysis.

02:53 This is where you identify an issue as it is.

02:57 Then you move on to the To Be development where you decide what the solution is going to be and finally, implementation where you implement the solution.

03:11 For example, your yoyos sales have dropped significantly.

03:16 You research why and discovered that the issue is that the thread keeps breaking.

03:22 Then you identify solutions.

03:24 Swapping the current material you're using with a more durable one is one way to handle this. You could also offer free replacements for yoyos already bought and a one year warranty for any devices sold from now on.

03:38 That should fix the problem.

03:40 So you implement it immediately.

03:43 If you're struggling to see what each phase is about, there are a few guiding questions you can ask yourself.

03:51 Is this phase one where I'm planning timelines.

03:55 Am I planning what the scope should look like and what are the quality standards? Am I delivering part of the scope already? Now this last question covers the as is phase we just looked at.

04:07 At a glance you would think it's a planning phase when really it's execution because this is work that has already been planned and is intended to deliver part of the scope.

04:19 Wait a second. Looking at this diagram, you may be wondering about the initiation and closure phases because we haven't mentioned them in this lesson at all.

04:28 Well, these phases always exist.

04:31 And a good project manager will know what initiation involves and how to close a project in a professional manner.

04:38 Everything we discussed previously in the course is universal for every project.

04:43 Now you should already know that projects are just slightly depending on the kind of problem they are designed to solve.

04:49 So we could ask the following question Can projects have stages which combine execution and planning activities? The answer is a resounding yes.

05:01 However, this must be done carefully and with great consideration.

05:06 It's something that can be done with some projects, with great success, but definitely not all of them.

05:12 So in the next lesson, we're going to have a look at this type of framework which is called Agile.

05:19 Thanks and see you there.