In the project initiation phase, you’re setting the foundations for later success. Especially if you review them separately, instead of just treating all the phases as one big project. There are 4 project life cycle phases: initiation, planning, execution, and closure.Īnd if you monitor each, you can systematize them and understand where there’s room for improvement. While project managers love talking about life cycle phases and definitions, the reason why you, as someone who’s managing projects on the daily, actually need project life cycle management is improvement. Or maybe you’re just using the wrong tools that aren’t giving you enough information. Maybe you haven’t received enough information in the initiation phase, which led to having to backtrack at a later date. For example, if you monitor different project life cycle phases, you can see if there’s a problem in a particular phase. You’re making it more manageable and as such, it’s much easier to understand what you’re doing right and what you could be doing even better. It’s similar to how you break down projects into tasks to make them more achievable. This leads to a lot of data you could use to improve and yet, because it’s buried under the pile that is the project itself, you can’t. When you view the project as a whole, it can seem overwhelming to monitor and analyze everything. It’s impossible to optimize if you can’t measure so by understanding your project life cycle, you are actually gaining insight about: It’s all about making sure you’re not among the 57% of projects that fail due to communication breakdown. Understanding how long it takes for your team to finish a project can help you estimate quotes and understand your strengths (as well as weaknesses).

One of the most important metrics is actually life cycle length. Just like any other part of a project, you have to manage the life cycle, as well. How Does the Project Life Cycle Affect the Whole Project?

Budget and life cycle plan template