The phases of a project
The course of a project in a classic life cycle: feasibility, scoping, design, build, acceptance, deployment and closure, with each phase's purpose, deliverable and exit milestone.
- 21 cards
- 5 topics
- Free
The outline, topic by topic
Each topic is weighted the way the exam weighs it.
- Concepts
- Questions
- Sort and link
- Scenarios
- Understand
A few cards from the deck
Project phase: what is it?
Show the answer
A period of the project devoted to one kind of activity, which produces a deliverable and ends with a validation.
Splitting into phases lets you decide to continue, correct or stop at each phase end, before committing the next phase's money.
What is the closure phase for?
- Hand over the documentation, release the team and draw lessons in a review
- Fix the defects found by users after go-live
- Have the sponsor validate the requirements
- Train users on the delivered tool
Show the answer
Hand over the documentation, release the team and draw lessons in a review
Closure ends the project: documents handed over, resources released, review written. Fixing defects belongs to warranty or maintenance, training to deployment.
The … study checks that a project is possible and worthwhile before committing to it; … then sets its objectives, scope, budget and schedule.
Show the answer
The feasibility study checks that a project is possible and worthwhile before committing to it; scoping then sets its objectives, scope, budget and schedule.
Feasibility answers "should we do it?", scoping answers "what exactly do we do, with what means?".
Deliverable: what is it?
Show the answer
A tangible, verifiable result produced by a task or a phase: a document, a piece of software, a training delivered.
Without a deliverable you cannot say work is done: "making progress on design" is not one, "the reviewed design file" is.
A project starts straight with development. In month three, the sponsor asks for functions nobody had costed. Which skipped phase would have prevented this drift?
- Acceptance, which should have taken place before the build
- The feasibility study, which compares solution scenarios
- Design, which chooses the technical architecture
- Scoping, which fixes objectives, scope, budget and schedule
Show the answer
Scoping, which fixes objectives, scope, budget and schedule
Without a validated charter there is no reference for what is in the project. Every request becomes a negotiation, and the budget drifts. Feasibility says whether to do the project, design how to build it: neither bounds what it contains.