- Project Phase.
Project phase is a collection of related activities that
will produce a meaningful deliverable once the activities in that phase is
completed.
Phase of a project lifecycle can be described by a variety attributes,
these can be name, number, duration, resources requirements, etc.
When dividing a project to phases generally work done in the
phase gives the name of the phase.
For example, development a software project, in the software
development project typical phases of a project lifecycle will be analysis,
technical design, software development, testing, deployment, and after-live
support, respectively.
During analysis project requirements are detailed, analysis
documents are prepared, and project team develops the software accordingly. Then
technical design phase starts.
During this phase, software engineers work on technical
solutions about how they can ensure the project requirements as be the analysis
documents.
After the technical, software development phase starts.
Software engineers develop the services, technical aspects, and technical
solutions as in a technical design. Once the development finishes, test
engineer will test the functionality and features of the software. If there are
any bugs or missing requirements, these arise during testing phase and project
team fixed the issue.
Once the testing pass successfully, software will be ready
for deployment. Software is deployed and customer start use the end product.
When the product is live after the deployment unexpected issues might be arise.
After live support for this case, project team works arising issues to solve
the issue immediately.
Note that. These phases for software development project,
each industry, even each organization can have they tailored phases for
projects.
- Phase Gates.
Phase gates refer to the end of a phase and start the new
phase in the project.
Phase gates will be held at the end of a phase. During phase
gates project performances and progress are compared against the project
baseline.
Project business case, project charter, project management
plan, and benefit management plan are re-visited to check whether the end of
phase results meet these documents. If there are any conflict or missing
aspects, these must be corrected otherwise, phase cannot be completed.
Generally, corporate companies define different phases for
different type of projects.
For example, phases for marketing projects, phases for
technical projects, etc. and governance’s role and organization not in the same
hierarchy with the project manager inspect the phase success in the end of each
phase.
For example, once the project manager report the analysis
phase completed, the team or the person responsible to check and assess whether
the requirements is finalized, and analysis phase is completed.
Usually, this is done over check list. It cover actions like
whether the analysis documents is complete, whether the analysis documents is
approved by customer, whether the sponsor is reviewed the analysis documents, etc.
If the phase control pass successfully, next phase in the
project lifecycle starts.