To start off, I would first argue that it is inaccurate to even consider a single phase as being the “least important” out of the rest when talking about the project life cycle. Like many systems, every aspect has its own unique role and importance and without one, the others are negatively impacted and sometimes even useless. In the case for the project life cycle, I strongly believe that every phase depends strongly on the others and therefore they all have an equal importance. If I were to have to answer the question, however, and choose one to be the least required in terms of completing the project with the smallest negative impact, I would probably say the closing phase. Because the closing phase entails closing contracts, paying the workers, giving final reports, and logging everything during the project, I believe that by ignoring the closing phase, the only damage that is caused is done towards the workers and the engineers who would benefit from the knowledge when starting a new project in the future. If every other phase were to remain as a higher priority, the project, in theory, would still be completed successfully. Furthermore, the most important phase, in my opinion, would have to be the planning phase. The planning phase, if executed properly, removes a tremendous amount of risk and errors that may arise in the future during the executing phase and reduces the amount of work and activity throughout the controlling phase. If milestones are clearly and accurately laid out, resources are allocated, and priorities during each week are set in place from the beginning, the team as a whole should operate rather smoothly and efficiently until the end of the project. Of course, however, this would all be useless without the proper execution during the execution phase considering the gameplan requires actions be made in an orderly fashion. Nevertheless, if more effort, research, and resources are dedicated towards the planning phase, less pressure will be placed on the following phases (executing, controlling, and closing) which occur closer towards the final deadline of the project where there is very little room for readjustments and changes.