Navigating Projects with Confidence and Precision
Project management can seem daunting, but when you break a project into 5 key phases, it becomes much more manageable. Understanding the fundamental phases that every project goes through will get you one step closer to being a project management success.
Project phase one: Initiation
A lot of people skip this part – either they’re not aware of it or they don’t think it’s important, but Initiation is where critical work happens to sets the tone for everything that you’re going to do in your project.
In this stage you lay a solid foundation by:
- Getting clear on high level concepts
- Clarifying your marching orders with senior executives
- Validating project scope and priorities
- Setting expectations for project milestones
Project phase two: Planning
Many PMs mistakenly think that planning is step one, and although sometimes you can combine initiation and planning, it’s crucial that you don’t do one without the other. In stage two you:
- Build off the documents you started in phase one
- Set up your project charter
- Communicate with the steering committee and managers of your project team
- Map out a baseline work breakdown structure
Your kickoff meeting does happen in the planning stage – but not until the end – because you need to have things properly prepared before you first bring your project team together.
Project phases three – five
Understanding every one of the five stages of a project will help you avoid rework, scope creep, miscommunication, and many other things that can lead to a failure to reach the finish line. I made a video that explains each of the fives steps in detail.
Follow me over to YouTube and let’s keep chatting about managing a project through the project lifecycle.
For more step-by-step guides on all things project management, make sure to check out my SLAY Project Management online course. It takes you through all the steps of successfully managing a project – including documentation – from start to close. You’ll get every template you will need, along with detailed video instructions on how to use them.
Adriana Girdler, PMP | Creator of Slay Project Management
