Chi Zhang
Herzing University
MBA 631 Operations and Projects Management
Dr. Gary Hanney
Abstract
To control the process of a project and manage the operation of a project, the theory of project management life cycle is widely used in nowadays business administration. Treating the whole time dimension of the project as a life cycle, project management life cycle separates the project to some steps and uses checkpoint, milestone and base line to control the operation of the project. This article will be a general introduction of project management life cycle theory and will use an example to show the practice of project management life cycle in a real business project.
Four Steps of Project Management Life Cycle
Project Management Life Cycle is a separation for a project. According to Ms. Cui’s research, managers can separate a whole project to some steps and connect those steps with project operation; the sum of all those steps are project management life cycle (Cui, 2011). There are four components in project management life cycle, which are time requirement, project stages, project task and project result. Generally, because the unpredictability of project, project management life cycle often uses time dimension to control and evaluate the project (Cui, 2011).
There are many ways to separate project life cycle into steps. Project Management Institute in United States (PMI) separates the project life cycle into three steps: beginning stage, medium stage and final stage (Cui, 2011). Chinese Project Management Body of Knowledge (C-PMBOK) separates the project life cycle into four steps: Conception Phase, Development Phase, Implementation Phase and Final Phase. Though those two standards have some differences, both of them separate a project into many steps in order to survey and control the operation of project. In my opinion, the standard of C-PMBOK is