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Unit 2: The Project Life Cycle

life. Some writers include the feasibility study as part of the project life cycle; others believe that Notes
the project proper only begins once the feasibility study is completed and the proposal accepted,
or only when cost codes and a budget for the project are defined by the company accountants.
We will use the point of conception, even though the actual circumstances can make that gestation
period rather cloudy or uncertain. The practical starting point is often considered to be the
birthday, since management normally give approval after they have been presented with the
feasibility study and decided to go ahead with further work. If you find it helpful, you can think
of the work needed to carry out a feasibility study as being a mini-project in its own right.

Task Find out two differences between delivery and deliverables.
Even with the best of plans and most stringent of controls, real life is always more chaotic than
the models we apply to it; the same is true of projects. Nevertheless, in the case of projects,
models are useful to help us recognize different ways of moving from the project’s beginning to
its end, and the broad phases where the activities that take place change from one type to
another. Each activity will be undertaken using a known procedure at a given level of formality,
starting with a number of inputs from preceding activities that are the basis for further work. On
completion of an activity there may be one or more outputs, which are known as deliverables
(because they are needed for other activities). So, the order in which these activities are carried
out is called a life cycle, which outlines the overall process for a given project. A phase is the
term used to describe a set of interrelated activities that are needed to achieve a particular
outcome or deliverable. When a life cycle includes a number of phases, it is usually because
some form of evaluation or review is needed to decide when each phase is completed.
There is no single life cycle that applies to all projects, although certain types of project will be
associated with a particular life cycle. We begin by describing a basic life cycle and then discuss
some variations, which may provide an appropriate model for a given situation. We will use the
characteristics of software to illustrate that a project’s outcome is more than just a physical
object.
In practice, the description of a life cycle may be very general or very detailed: some might only
suggest what to do, while others might prescribe what must be done. Highly detailed descriptions
might involve numerous forms, models, checklists and so on which have been associated with
the term project management methodology (see, for example, PMI, 2004).

!
Caution Projects compete with functional departments for resources and personnel. More
serious, with the growing proliferation of projects, is the project versus project conflict for
resources within multi-project organizations.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:

6. Projects often interact with other projects being carried out simultaneously by their
…………………… organization.
7. A project is usually a onetime activity with a well-defined set of …………………… end
results.
8. The …………………… is a skeleton framework which you can build your project around.

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