Let's take a look at the project lifecycle projects have a distinct lifecycle. And as we manage more and more projects, we become more and more familiar with that lifecycle, we recognize certain features of it. And to me, the thing that seems most easily recognizable is this. the lifecycle of a project is very much like the lifecycle of a human being. Because projects start small, they don't do very much at the beginning. They don't involve much resources.

They don't achieve very much rather like a small child. But the thing to remember about a small chart is that what it doesn't do very much in the world, the influences that impinge upon that child can have a phenomenal impact on the way that child's going to turn out in the forms of time. And the same is true of a project right at the beginning of a project don't achieve very much on the surface. But what you do any influences that your project is subject to in those early stages are going to have a profound impact on the way the project turns out. And then, of course, as human beings, we grow up into adolescence into teenagers. And whilst there are some exceptions, most teenagers, again, don't do a great deal in the world a bit more than small children.

But what they do do is they start to think about the future, they start to design the future they want to create for themselves and put in place plans. And that's precisely what we do with projects. We design, what the outcomes are going to look like in detail and we plan for how it To achieve it, then for us, and for many of you, watching, this is the stage you're at. for us. As human beings, there is a long and very productive period of our lives, which we call adulthood. And in a project, this is where the project, create stuff and make stuff happen and builds change in real world.

And finally, as human beings, there's a short period of decline where we don't do very much, but increasingly, we start to bore our families and friends with all that we've achieved in the past and services with projects. There was a short period winding the project down when one of the main things we do is review what we've achieved. So the project lifecycle should seem very familiar to you. And here it is, what we do with the project lifecycle, just as we do with the law lifecycle of a human being is we divide it into stages. And throughout this course, I'm going to work on a very simple four stage lifecycle model. Now for you, in your organization, you may already have a number of stages prescribed, it may be four, it might be five, six, or even more.

At its simplest, it could be three, the beginning, the middle, and the end stages. The advantage of our four stage model is it's very simple and easy to describe, for you to understand. And of course, once you've understood it, you can extend your understanding to create the stages you need to fit into the culture of your organization. And of course, to tailor the project stages to the needs of your project, because fundamentally as a project manager, that's your job. So let's have a look at the four stages. The first of these is what I'm going to call the definition stage.

And there are probably more names in the English language for this stage than for any other stage. It's often called definition but also scoping stage, initiation stage startup stage, it could be called the concept stage, even the conceptual stage. Inception is another name. And if you're working in a commercial services organization, you may refer to this as the proposal stage or the thinking stage. There are lots and lots of names. Now, the second stage is what I'm going to call the planning stage.

And that's probably the communist name, particularly in organizations doing organization projects. However, if you're working in the IT industry, both software hardware, lots of organizations will refer to this as the design stage as often will architects because for these industries, the essential elements of this stage are to design a solution that will work for the client. And in both of these industries, both it and architecture, project management practices and the planning process are very well understood. So the big challenge is in design in heavily resource intensive industries, such as construction industry or in uniform services, this is often referred to as the mobilization, stage mobilization because with these organizations requiring a lot of resources, the challenge of this stage is to get all of those resources properly equipped, properly briefed and properly mobilized, ready to go and a word for my English audience because in the UK Public Center.

This stage is often called the initiation stage, particularly in large organizations like government departments in NHS trusts and Metropolitan authorities. And that's because the UK government's project management methodology, known as Prince two describes this as the initiation stage. Or I know because initiation means startup and we've already started our project up, but that's the name they use. The big third stage is most often known as either the delivery stage or the implementation stage. This is where we deliver the project where we implement our plan. It may also be known quite often as the execution stage, although I have to admit, certainly in the UK, I'm hearing that term less and less frequently.

It's the plan you execute, by the way, not the project manager. And finally, It's worth mentioning that this third stage is sometimes known as the rollout stage. Because in a certain type of project, a rollout project, this is when we roll out the project and a rollout project is one where we have to implement the project in multiple places. We get it right in one place, probably with a pilot. When we're satisfied, we know what we're doing. We then roll it out to other parts of the organization, or other geographies.

And the final stage. The fourth stage, is most commonly known as the close down stage, the finish stage, the shutdown stage, anything that denotes its true nature, which is a short stage that's there in order to finish the project and close it down in an orderly fashion. And towards the end of this series of videos, I'll talk to you about the three things that you must do to close a project down in an orderly way and therefore Probably the three reasons that represent why different organizations often fail to shut down a project completely. Everyone knows it's finished and yet, it just keeps on going a bit like a dripping tap, you tighten the faucet tighter and tighter and it keeps dripping dripping. So we'll look at the three things that you need to do. It's worth mentioning that some organizations also have a stage beyond the closure stage where they review the outcomes of the project.

We'll discuss that under the closure stage. More about the four stages in the next video