Lifecycle and Analyze How Each Phase Could

¶ … lifecycle and analyze how each phase could support an organization's business strategy. These will include the initiation phase, the planning phase, the execution phase, the monitoring phase and the closing phase. As Kerzner remarks, this approach provides the portfolio selection that is important for companies since it keeps them from taking on projects that they can not handle and managing the projects they have. The process allows maximum time and resource management to make sure the job gets done (Kerzner, 2005, 153). In the initiation phase, the projected goal is established.

The assigned project manager works with the involved parties who are known as project stakeholders in order to fully determine how to measure success once its completed. The stakeholders are oftentimes the ones who are funding the project. This gives them an overriding need to know what is happening. This knowledge is necessary as the project scope needs to be known at the beginning.

This will usually include the project goals, the budget, the timelines and any other types of variables that can then be used for the measurement of success at the final closing phase (Reynolds & McDonough, 2011). This is similar to the concept of the embryonic phase where the project is being conceived combined with the selection of leadership selection ("Project management," 2011). The planning phase is the phase where the project manager does the groundwork of the project.

Here, the project managers usually creates a specific list of things that have to happen in order for project goal or goals to be met successfully. This list should be made of identifiable steps that can be documented in the form of tasks. Often, project managers choose to come up with the project tasks manually on paper with an old-fashioned brainstorming session, such as working with sticky notes where they systematically lay out the tasks so that they can see them in the context of the total picture.

Sometimes they will use management systems software to streamline the process when there are time constraints and limitations on available personnel to work on the project (Reynolds & McDonough, 2011). This encompasses many of the same attributes and the line management phase where the project is accepted and commitment is made by the management and the organization ("Project management," 2011). During the execution phase, the plan is put in motion. In more modern projects, the project management tracking software pays off well.

The project management software pays off by helping smaller, leaner teams do more with less, especially during such an active phase of the project timeline where the manager when they are incredibly busy. Such a software package allows the manager to have effective command and control of the project (Reynolds & McDonough, 2011). The life-cycle phase encompasses the execution and monitoring phase ("Project management," 2011). This leads into the monitoring phase, but it is necessary to caution that distinction between execution and this phase.

In the phases of project management, the execution and monitoring and Controlling can be mistaken to be one and the same. While very closely related, it may be necessary to jump back to phase three at this time in order to revisit the planning, especially if things go wrong or to take a moment to coordinate the various phases (not necessarily functioning simultaneously). In phase four, it is important to check that all is going according to plan.

It would almost seem that the phase should be considered coordination, as opposed to command in phase three. Again, they go hand in hand, but are distinctive and represent different hands (Reynolds & McDonough, 2011). In this phase, the project manage will use the project management software will to provide detailed summary reports of about the various parts of the project. Good software can save you a lot of time as well as money during phase five. These reports will be necessary for reports to the stakeholders that bankrolled.