The project lifecycle

Why it matters

You do not need the job title "project manager" to manage projects. A developer shipping a feature, a civil engineer delivering a culvert replacement, a designer running a website redesign and a trainer rolling out a new course are all running projects. Knowing how projects are structured helps you plan realistically, spot trouble early and talk with the people who fund and approve the work.

Throughout this course we follow one small project: a team of four building a volunteer sign-up website for a local food bank in eight weeks.

What makes work a project

A project is a temporary effort to create a unique result. Two words matter:

• Temporary: it has a start and an end. The food bank site is done when it launches and is handed over.
• Unique: the result has not been made in exactly this way before.

That is different from operations, the ongoing, repeated work of running something. Answering volunteer emails every week after launch is operations. Building the site is a project.

Every project balances three main constraints, often drawn as a triangle: scope (what you deliver), time and cost, with quality in the middle. Change one and the others feel it. If the food bank asks for a donation page as well, either the deadline moves, more people join, or something else is cut.

The five phases

The Project Management Institute (PMI) describes work in five process groups. Many organisations use them as phases:

1. Initiating. Decide whether the project should happen and authorise it. Typical outputs: a business case (why it is worth doing) and a project charter, a short document naming the goal, the sponsor, the project manager, high-level scope, budget and deadline. For the food bank: "Replace paper sign-up sheets with a website by 1 March, budget USD 4,000, sponsor: the volunteer coordinator."
2. Planning. Work out how. Scope statement, work breakdown, schedule, budget, risk register, communication plan. Most of this course lives here.
3. Executing. Do the work: design, build, test, train. This is usually where most of the time and money go.
4. Monitoring and controlling. Runs alongside executing. Compare progress with the plan, manage changes, track risks and report status. It is not a separate later phase: you monitor from day one.
5. Closing. Get formal acceptance, hand over, release people, close contracts, record lessons learned and archive the files.

A diagram often shows effort rising through executing and falling at closing, while the cost of making changes rises steadily: changing the plan in week one is cheap; changing it the day before launch is expensive.

Predictive, adaptive and hybrid

Not every project runs the phases once, in a straight line.

• Predictive (often called waterfall): plan most of the work up front, then execute. It suits work where requirements are stable and changes are expensive, such as constructing a bridge, where you cannot pour concrete twice.
• Adaptive (agile approaches such as Scrum and Kanban): plan a little, build a small working piece, get feedback, repeat. It suits software and design work where requirements change as people see results.
• Hybrid: predictive for some parts (a fixed launch date, hardware orders), adaptive for others (the website features). Many real projects are hybrid.

Even agile projects still initiate, plan (in smaller slices), execute, monitor and close. The phases repeat on a smaller scale. The agile-delivery course covers this in depth.

Phase gates

Many organisations add phase gates (or stage gates): a review at the end of a phase where a sponsor decides go, no-go or change course. Gates stop a project from drifting into expensive execution without a clear plan.

Certifications and careers

PMI's CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management) is a common entry-level certification, and the PMP (Project Management Professional) requires several years of experience leading projects. Agile certifications such as Professional Scrum Master are also common. Requirements and exam content change, so read them on the official sites (pmi.org, scrum.org). Checked on 2026-10-23.

Common mistakes

• Skipping initiation. Starting work without a sponsor or a written goal leads to arguments about what "done" means.
• Treating monitoring as the end. Problems found only at the end are expensive.
• Never closing. Projects that fade out instead of closing leave loose ends, unpaid invoices and no lessons learned.

Quick recap

• A project is temporary and unique; operations are ongoing and repeated.
• Scope, time and cost (with quality) constrain each other.
• Phases: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling (throughout), closing.
• Predictive, adaptive and hybrid approaches run these phases differently.

Try it

This lesson is quiz only. Open the Do tab to check you can name the phases and what happens in each.