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Business Meeting

Project Life Cycle

Initiate

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  • Project Ideation

    • A need for a project is identified.

    • Project Manager, Key Stake Holder, and resources are assigned.

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  • Project Charter

    • The Project Manager completes a Project Charter.

    • The Project Charter identifies internal and external resources, team members, project goals, estimated time required from resources and team members, estimated budgets, ROI, and completion time frame of the project.

    • KSH reviews, edits, and signs off on the Project Charter once agreed upon.

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  • Project Kick-Off 

    • Project team members are invited to a project kick-off meeting

    • The purpose of the meeting is to align project team members with the project goals and project deliverables.

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Plan
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  • Create a Work Breakdown Structure

    • The PM should expand the outline of the WBS into a detailed version, with tasks assigned to individual project team members, subject matter experts, and other resources.

    • Anticipated dates of completion should be assigned to each task

    • The PM should make sure that all participants of the Project receive and understand their assignments and anticipated completion dates.

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Implement
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  • Follow through the Work Breakdown Structure

    • The PM should follow up on the task completion and ensure that the work progresses according to schedule.

    • As tasks are being completed, changes made or due dates reassigned, the PM should be updating the WBS. If a major change to the WBS (timeline change or new major task/milestone) is necessary, the document needs to be reapproved with the KSH.

      •  Best Practice: Save previous documents to record the history of changes.

    • Communicate project status updates to the project team as needed.

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Deliver

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  • Delivery Plan - Guide the release of the Project’s Deliverables to the End Users

    • The PM should coordinate the launch of the Project Deliverables into production according to the Delivery Plan.

    • The Delivery Plan is created as part of the WBS and should account for the impact on all affected parties and provide action items of notification of how and when those parties will be affected.

      • This process may include data migration, training plans, user acceptance testing, announcements and notifications, official release of policies and procedures, etc.

      • Once the PM determines the deliverables have been successfully completed, the KSH will need to sign off in agreeance.

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  • Maintenance Plan

    • Upon successful launch of the Project Deliverables into production, the PM should review each of the Deliverables to see if maintenance will be necessary in the future.

      • If there is a need for maintenance, each Deliverable should have a Maintenance plan including the required resources.

      • The KSH should go over and approve the Maintenance plan or confirm that it’s not needed, for each Deliverable.

      • Once the Project is closed, this Maintenance plan should be transferred to the parties responsible for maintenance of each Deliverable.

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Close

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  • KSH Sign-Off

    • After the results of the Project have been delivered, the PM should obtain recognition and agreeance from the KSH of the project completion.

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  • Lessons Learned

    • After the Project has been completed, the PM should document their lessons learned from managing this project.

      • This will assist future project managers who may be managing similar projects in the future.

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