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Project Life Cycle

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(@sameer-rana)
Posts: 78
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In my opinion, the actual success of a project is based on how it performs after it has been developed into a final product. For instance, in reference to a medical device, I believe it would be successful if the final product met or exceeded the sales expectations of the company. As a result, I wouldn’t classify a project as successful the moment it has finished creating the desired end deliverable. Therefore, I believe the initiation phase is the most crucial to the success of a project. The reason this step is the most crucial is because it is here where the project team will be able to find the answers to questions such as whether there is a demand for this product and will it be a profitable investment for the company. Due to this, I was quite surprised to learn in the lectures that this step is often not given a high level of importance by companies. Personally, I believe there is no value to a project if despite being planned and executed to perfection, it is unable to bring a satisfactory return on investment because the initiation phase was overlooked. In terms of the other remaining phases, I don’t believe that any one is of lesser importance than the others. They all should be given their respective importance to ensure the completion of a project that fulfills its desired objective while being profitable to the company.

 
Posted : 15/09/2019 7:27 pm
(@darshannayee)
Posts: 40
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I believe all the phases of project life cycle are important in their own respect. However, if I have to choose then I would say planning phase important,but in order to get to that phase initiating phase has to be done or can overlap with the planning phase as explained in this weeks lecture. I think planning phase is important because it involves assembling team, finalizing scope, and taking initiative to start the first meeting. This phase involves going in to details on what is involved in the project and how to organize it so it is finished on time. This phase also involves creating Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) document and assigning team members their task that needs to be completed. This phase decided how the project will be done, with whom, what are the costs, where and from whom the resources will be obtained, and what is the timeline.

I believe all the phases are necessary in order to finish project successfully and all of the phases are important. However, initiating phase is skipped during most of the projects and some of those projects still get done, would make initiating phase least important, but I don't believe it should be skipped.

 
Posted : 15/09/2019 11:17 pm
(@jwashin3)
Posts: 37
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Initially, I leaned towards calling the Initiation or the Planning phases as the most crucial phases, but after a taste of real-life projects, I'm more convinced that the Monitoring phase is the most important.  Reason being, with the development of new processes and products, there are many unknowns.  Therefore, closely monitoring product development, then having the fluidity to make a pivot in product development or manufacturing due to new information or an unforseen market episode, is critical to ultimately creating a sound medical device.

 
Posted : 01/08/2020 2:20 am
(@jmeghai)
Posts: 79
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I do think that all 5 phases are crucial when compared to the human 5 sense organs. These sense organs relay information through the sensory neurons to the appropriate places within the nervous system. When one of the senses shuts down; take for example your sense of smell, it affects you taste  organ. All of these senses are connected to the brain-one sense organ shutting down affects the brain one way or the other in receiving information.

Therefore, the 5 phases are all connected to the project; when one of these phase is skipped or not properly executed then the projects suffers and most times does not yield the desired out come. Also, they all are crucial because they all overlap at one point or the other; Monitoring & Controlling been the baseline for all phases and determining the outcome and success of the project.  

Just as each task in each hierarchy relates to each other, all Phases are needed to execute a successful project. 

 
Posted : 11/09/2020 12:53 am
(@jafar)
Posts: 75
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In general, all phases in the project life cycle are important and must be done properly.
I think that the initiating, planning, and closing phases are repeatable. It is more like copying from past project because the headlines at these phases are similar to other projects (of course the details are different). However, the executing and monitoring & controlling phases are more important because these phases contain working in a site as be planned on papers (in the planning phase) during executing phase, and re-planning the paperwork with adjusting at field during monitoring & controlling phase.

 
Posted : 12/09/2020 12:15 am
(@nikhil-nagarjun)
Posts: 78
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Every Phase has its own uniqueness, however I feel that Defining stage or planning phase is more important where requirements gathering, analysis gets better picture of scope and objective which helps in accuracy of project timelines and deliverables.

 
Posted : 13/09/2020 5:08 pm
(@jonwil123)
Posts: 58
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I think that all of the phases are very important and rely on one another to some capacity. However if I had to choose the one phase that is the most crucial to the success of a project, it would have to be the monitoring and controlling phase. From my experience, I know that initiating and planning are extremely important but at the end of the day, what you plan doesn't always happen. There are always things that will be out of your control and that is why controlling and monitoring is so important. When things don't go as planned or when what was planned doesn't work how it was expected to, the most important thing is how your team responds to it and hopefully, eventually, overcomes these obstacles. 

 
Posted : 13/09/2020 5:48 pm
(@maniakberk)
Posts: 46
Eminent Member
 
Posted by: @bb254

This week’s lecture discusses the different phases within a project life cycle; initiating, planning, executing, monitoring & controlling and closing phase.
Which phase of the project life cycle do you think is crucial to the success of a project? Explain.
Which phase of the project life cycle do you find least important? Explain.

I believe Initiating and controlling both share the first place for being crucial to a project. I believe just because it is regarded as the 'easiest' people do not care about it as much as they need to do. I have experienced issues with the projects I worked on as a project member because of this. One of my projects actually was denied because of its similarity to another project and all the work was made for nothing. 

Secondly, the controlling function is crucial as much as initiating. Same as initiating a simple mistake that was made and was not checked in terms of quality or in other words controlled can cause your project to fail thus failing the timing of the project. The same thing happened to me in my Masters's thesis last year. Without going into detail a simple mistake I did and did not do a quality check for in the preprocessing steps of my rs-fMRI scans cause a false positive result and all the work I did meant nothing. I had to redo all of the steps again and because of this my MS thesis was not finished in the spring and I had to do all the work of 2 semesters in one semester(summer) plus writing the thesis.

 
Posted : 13/09/2020 7:05 pm
(@herreravanessa)
Posts: 14
Active Member
 

I think the monitoring and controlling phase is the most important because it allows for measuring results and understanding the performance and outcomes of the project. It also provides a great opportunity to reflect on the current project and potentially learn skills and aspects of it that can be used or improved for future projects. The initiating phase might be considered the least important since is often overlooked, but is still important to define the scope of the project. However, there may be a lot of existing information from previous projects that can be used within a company that might allow a team to focus less time and energy on this phase.

 
Posted : 14/09/2020 2:03 pm
(@shereenmurrah)
Posts: 39
Eminent Member
 

For the success of every project, it is crucial to implement all the phases according to plan. Although, I can assume that the initiating phase carries the most importance into running a successful project. The hardest decision in anything we do, and in this case, a project, is initiating. This phase can be compared to a house foundation; without proper foundation, the house collapses and so does a project. A project needs to have a proper/solid foundation that the team members can be committed to completing. If the start of the project is not successful, it will be reflected on the product at the end. The initiation phase makes the rest of the phases fall in place without foundation complications occurring in the middle of the project. Everything needs to be understood in the start of any project in order to continue working to achieve a result/product. That is why spending the most time and effort at first pays off eventually in the end. Having a non-proper foundation can waste time and money, leading to an unsuccessful result. Also, before spending resources and committing to the rest of the project, the initiating phase is there to make us understand everything we need to know and the objectives that will be achieved later on.

 
Posted : 14/09/2020 7:02 pm
(@rowel2202)
Posts: 51
Trusted Member
 

The planning phase, in my opinion, is the most crucial in the project life cycle. The planning phase sets out the whole project and how it will be completed. Everything else will most likely go smoothly if this is done right. If planning is done incorrectly, it is quite likely that something will go wrong in the subsequent cycles. When you're unsure of what's going on and haven't planned ahead of time, it's like entering into a project blind. I also don't believe that there is a least important cycle; I believe that all cycles are necessary for the project life cycle to be completed.

 
Posted : 24/06/2021 7:44 pm
(@dwhite0224)
Posts: 20
Eminent Member
 

The project execution stage is the true start of the project, when you carry out all of the tasks and activities you mapped out in the planning stage. This is where the majority of the project work takes place, and it requires constant monitoring.

I would have to say project closure is the least important, because one its easy to do and it doe not consist of a lot of work to complete.

 
Posted : 27/06/2021 4:44 pm
jailynp26
(@jailynp26)
Posts: 50
Trusted Member
 

This is a great question .. and honestly I would say the implementation phase. I picked this as the most important because if you don’t brand right or create something that is useful it will set the tone for the rest. When you have a good idea but don’t know how to brand it, it creates the lack of interest to consumers. So finding a catchy saying , or a familiar face being used it makes people feel safe and welcomed. I don’t think any one step is less important. But my second important step is initiation because this is the baseline , this is the foundation. Gathering ideas and creating a start point and target audience is very important! 

 
Posted : 30/06/2021 8:05 am
(@cassiem)
Posts: 78
Trusted Member
 

The planning process is crucial to the success of a good project specifically because this phase consists of the WBS, gantt chart, and finance management, to name a few. Any good project can only be completed in a timely manner if the tasks are formatted before execution. Similarly, the team will need to know their budget precisely in specific areas. This may require them to solve problems differently to account for little funds. It is better to plan ahead than to be over budget or extend the life of the project. I do not believe any remaining phase is considered the least important because they all are essential to a successful project. I like to think of these processes as a scale. The most important being the planning phase, followed by the execution process. The initiating, controlling, and closing processes are at the same level of importance. The meat of the project does not take place here, but they still are essential to a good project.

 
Posted : 10/09/2021 8:41 pm
(@elizabetharcher)
Posts: 10
Active Member
 

Like other replies state above, I believe that there are none of the phases of the project life cycle is the least important. They are all essential to the project, and if one is taken away the project will not be successful. Even the lecture this week said that the Initiating phase, while often overlooked, is crucial to the development of a project. If I had to pick the most important part of the project, I would pick the Planning Phase. How in-depth a team's planning is can make or break a project. I had a professor in college who stated at the very beginning of a year-long senior design class that "the devil is in the details" so he warned us to be thorough in planning as the more we planned, the better off we would be later when things went wrong. I brushed off his advice at the time and while my team did plan, we did not plan as thoroughly as we should have and kept changing the plan along the way, changing the scope. This caused many problems for us further down the line when it came time to actually build our medical device, and we almost did not finish on time as a result. From this experience, I learned the importance of having a fruitful planning phase and just how important it is as a phase of the project life cycle.  

 
Posted : 10/09/2021 9:35 pm
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