“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

Behind any successful project it is always the entire team’s effort to get into the stage of successful completion. However, a project manager (PM) always holds the weight in gold to take the complete responsibility irrespective of the results. Some people think a PM’s job is to solely check on the status and remind everyone about the deadlines, however that’s simply not the case. As they say “There is a science to what they do”, helping to perfectly execute the five phases of project management. 

Every project undergoes into 5 different phases, from initiating the project to closing/delivering the project. For starters, it is simple as “Baking a Cake”🤔 (making a batter (initiating)… to…putting it into the oven...to eating a delicious fluffy cake (close out)). Although all things that looks ‘simple’ may not be ‘easy’ :) as it involves various commandments and artifacts to follow through to get through the completion stage.

In this article, we’ll cover each of these phases and how the project evolve from nothing to its successful completion. For starters, I tried creating a simple infographic below for different phases that a project undergoes for a successful completion (with ‘baking a cake’ analogy) and might be handy to glance through as needed:

Phase 1: This is the start of the project where Business case is identified with initial requirements gathering.

Phase 2: This phase begins with setting goals and document detailed business case, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and a Schedule is created along with identification of Risks is done earlier than later.

Phase 3: In this phase, the resources are allocated appropriately, tasks are executed.

Phase 4: In this phase, Effort and cost tracking is done to make sure the project is with in time and budget, definition of done, and performance check (identification of possible bugs and how quickly they are addressed and fixed).

Phase 5: Retrospectives or Lessons learned, Improvements and Celebration is done at this stage for the close out.

The real life example of ‘Baking Cake’ analogy would help in understanding the project management process on a high level from Initiation to Close out:

1. Initiation: Plan the recipe, choose the appropriate baking pans

2. Planning: Measure and categorize all the ingredients

3. Execution: Stir together all the ingredients and pour into the respective pan to be used

4. Monitoring & Control: Check cake for doneness (using knife/toothpick) to make sure it is not raw (incomplete status)

5. Close out: Decorate, Eat and Celebrate and learn how things can improve (taste, process, time etc)!

Useful Links:

• Link to Project Charter or PID (Project Initiation Document)

• Link to WBS

• Link to Risk Management

• Link to S.M.A.R.T, C.L.E.A.R

• Link to Tracker sample

• Link to Resource Allocation

• Definition of Done

• Types of Test

• Retrospectives/Lessons Learned