Life cycle is a generic term used to describe progression through the stages/phases during the development of anything. For example, a human life cycle could be defined as birth, childhood, teenage…marriage, kids…. and finally death. Similarly, almost everything we see and experience in our daily lives, has a life cycle. In terms of the project management, we have to know about the product and project life cycles.
Product Life Cycle
This life cycle starts from the conception of the product till its withdrawal/end of life. Every product goes through the stages of conception, design, manufacturing, marketing, sale and at the end, withdrawal. May it be a monochrome or CRT monitors replaced by LCD/LED or steam engines used in railways now replaced by diesel/electrical engines, etc., they all have a specific life cycle and this life cycle remains the same, most of the times, during different version/model releases. The question arises is that what does a product life cycle has to do with the project management? Answer to this question is that a product is always a result of one or more projects. A simple web site can be done as one project whereas a CRM development may require multiple projects. There may be separate projects for the requirement analysis and designing phase, for the development and testing phase, for the marketing and sales phase, etc.
Project Life Cycle
As per the basic definition of a project we learnt in ‘Project – A definition!‘, a project’s life cycle is from the inception (the start) of the project till the result is delivered or the project is, for some reason, terminated (the end). For a project to be done, you need to know two things; a) what is to be done to get the result (technically called project life cycle) and b) how to do it or which SOPs to adopt to do it the best way (technically called project management methodology). For example, Agile is a methodology mostly adopted for engineering or IT related projects.
The selection of project life cycle depends upon the industry you are doing the project for. It helps you to understand the basic steps required to do the task for that particular industry in a standard way. For example, project life cycle for a software development project will include phases like design, coding, testing, installation and support. Similarly, project life cycle for a construction industry will have steps like feasibility report, planning, design, construction and maintenance work. If the size of a project is very large, even these steps of life cycle can be divided into smaller individual projects.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
