Project Management and its Five Main Stages
Any project requires proper execution of every step involved to ascertain its successful completion. Thus, the project manager and the team must ensure every aspect of the project is at their fingertips during execution. However, that does not guarantee success if the project management is ineffective. The primary role of the manager is to ensure that the team members are working towards achieving the common goal of the project. Nonetheless, the duties of the manager and the team might change depending on the phase of the project. Project management has five main stages that include initiating, planning, executing, control and monitoring, and closing. The execution of activities during each phase of the project influences the overall outcome (Westland, 2007).
Initiating Stage: Setting Goals and Scope
At the initiation stage, everyone involved in the project should understand the goals and the scope of the project. Therefore, the project manager can organize a briefing with the team members who have designated duties within the process. The meeting should be an open forum where everybody is free to ask or air their opinions regarding the project. The manager must ensure that everybody has fully understood every aspect of the project and all the role of the team members are clearly outlined; this can be done by distributing short questionnaires to be filled by those in attendance. In so doing the management can gauge the members’ understanding before commencing operations. Furthermore, it is important to engage all the shareholders at this stage so that they can also have a glimpse of the activities entailed in the project.
Planning Stage: Defining Roles and Risks
After initiating the project, planning follows. This phase is critical as it entails all the steps and requirement that are necessary for the efficient execution of the process. The manager should define the required skills that the development must exhibit. Therefore, it is at this stage that the specific duties are illustrated in detail. For instance, the team should be briefed on the skills and roles of supervisors and the scope of their operation. During this phase, the manager should outline some of the risks that might occur during project development. Consequently, the manager ought to layout the proposed risk management strategies that will be employed. In so doing, the team gains more confidence in working on the project, especially if the risk mitigation techniques are sound. Also, at this stage that the non-labor resources required in the project are defined. Similarly, all the materials and action items are disclosed to the team. It is imperative that the team member is made aware of the equipment and other necessities that will be utilized in the project.
Execution Stage: Turning Plans into Action
Furthermore, the Project Management Plan, PMP, is created at the planning phase, and its primary purpose is to guide the project team during the execution and after. The PMP affects the team members as well as the managers because they have to perform the tasks assigned in the project plan. For instance, the project plan lists the roles of the overall manager, technical manager, and other members; thus, everyone must perform their duties as defined in the PMP (Bisk, 2018).
Control and Monitoring Stage: Ensuring Progress and Quality
The next step after planning is the actual execution of the processes involved in the project. At this stage, every team ought to be busy performing the roles outlined in the PMP. However, some of the team members might not be engaged since their tasks are subsequent. Thus, it is important that members who are waiting for subsequent work participate in helping those who are already working to speed up the process. The team member must work with plans and ensure their specific tasks are executed appropriately. The project manager must always ensure that the work done is aimed at achieving the ultimate goal of the project. Therefore, he/she should be around checking the progress of work (Nicholas & Steyn, 2017).
Closing Stage: Finalizing and Evaluating the Project
As execution goes on, through control and monitoring of the project is also necessary. This phase requires the manager to check the processes and confirm if everything is going on as planned. Every stage of the project development should be within the estimated timeframe and budget. Besides, it is during this stage that quality assessments need to be done to ensure the outcome is up to the expected standards. The manager can invite a quality assessment team to do tests and analysis periodically. It is also important to review the PMP during this phase to ensure every team member is working towards attaining the overall objective of the project
Closing Stage: Unveiling the Project and Reflection
The final stage of the project is closing; all the activities are complete, and the project is ready to be unveiled to the customer. The closure involves giving the documentation, manuals, and network layouts if any. In most cases, the project team is not much needed during this phase; however, it is imperative to organize a dinner as a form of appraisal to celebrate the successful completion of the project. The manager can take a post-implementation review to find out the level of project success and identify the important lessons learnt during the whole process.
References
Bisk (2018). Five Phases of the Project Management Lifecycle. Retrieved from https://www.villanovau.com/resources/project-management/5-phases-project-management-lifecycle/#.W50hndzwbtQ
Burke, R. (2013). Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.
Nicholas, J. M., " Steyn, H. (2017). Project management for engineering, business and technology. Routledge.
Westland, J. (2007). The Project Management Life Cycle: A Complete Step-By-Step Methodology for Initiating, Planning, Executing " Closing a Project Success. Kogan Page Publishers.
