Common Project Phases

There are many different models for the
phases a project goes through during its
life cycle. One of these captures the alltoo-
frequent nature of projects that are not managed well and is
shown in Figure 1-2.
I have shown this diagram to people all over the world, and
they invariably laugh and say, “Yes, that’s the way it works.”
I suppose the comfort I can take is that we Americans are not the
only ones who have the problem, but the bad news is that there
are a lot of dysfunctional projects if everyone recognizes the model.
At the simplest level, a project has a beginning, middle, and
end. I prefer the life-cycle model shown in Figure 1-3, but there are
other versions that are equally valid. In my model, you will notice
that every project begins as a concept, which is always “fuzzy,” and
that the project team must formalize the definition of the job before
doing any work. However, because of our ready-fire-aim mentality,
we often start working on the job without ensuring that we have a
proper definition or that the mission and vision for the job are
shared by everyone. This invariably leads to major problems as the
project progresses.