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Execution in Project Management

Posted on September 6, 2025November 6, 2025 by os_admin

Once you have successfully passed the Planning Phase it is time for real action – Execution! The Project Execution Phase of the project management lifecycle is all about deliverables & outputs. The project team delivers the intended product or service to the customer for approval.

In official terms – The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) states – “The Executing Process Group consists of those processes performed to complete the work defined in the project management plan to satisfy the project specifications.”

The Project Execution Phase is usually the longest phase in the project management life cycle and consumes the most energy and resources. It is pretty evident by now as to how crucial it is to ensure your plans are realized with clinical precision and none to minimal deviation.

To enable you to monitor and control the project during this phase, you will need to implement a range of project management processes. These processes help you to manage time, cost, quality, change, risks and issues. They also help you to manage procurement, customer acceptance and communications.

The primary objective of Execution and Control is to construct deliverables as per the master project plan and consistently evaluate the processes and plans involved to deliver the output as per the agreed specifications.

It is all about action and direction!

The Execution Phase will broadly involve the following actions. The priority or sequence is entirely dependent on the nature of the project and organizational practices and preferences. But nevertheless, they are performed to enable successful project execution.

Acquire Develop & Manage the Team who will work on the project.
Execute Project Scope.
Recommend changes, bug fixes, preventive and corrective actions coming from Planning, Executing and Monitoring and Controlling process groups.
Timely Communication with all stakeholders.
Implemented approved changes to the processes, documentation and plans.
Team Building exercises.
Give recognition and rewards to team members and keep them motivated.
Hold Status Review meetings to ensure project is on track and any deviations are attended to at the earliest.
Use Work Authorization systems to allocate work.
Request Seller responses to your tender and outsourcing needs.
Select Seller for your procurement needs.

What does Execution Phase produce?

Project Deliverables

Project deliverables are the primary reason why projects are run. In fact, they represent the tangible expectations and results produced from our projects. Moreover, as part of the execution process, we ensure that the deliverables are well tested, meet the acceptance criteria, and receive approval from the customer and/or business sponsor.

It is of utmost importance that the project deliverables are of the agreed quality and meet the defined objectives and specifications.

Change Management Documents

Change is unavoidable in project management too. And in its true sense it is more of an asset. When handled properly, the change management process goes a long way in minimizing loss of precious project resources and reducing scope creep.

This is where the project management change plan comes in. The plan, as detailed in the project management change document, sets out the process by which any changes to the project’s goals, schedule, and/or resource usage are to be managed. In short, the change document is a vital component in managing projects of any size and complexity, and it heavily influences project success.

Change Management Document includes 3 items

Change Management Goals

This section defines the goals of the project’s change management plan. For example, the team clearly determines, evaluates, approves, and tracks changes efficiently. It also explains how the team designs the overall project change plan to benefit the project.

Change Management Responsibilities

In this section of the change document, define the responsibilities of all parties affected by a project change. For example, specify who receives project change requests, who evaluates them, and how project teams, upper management, and clients or stakeholders will receive communication about the changes.

Change Management Model

In this section you will clearly lay out the details of the change management process. You should describe how project change requests are made and evaluated, who is authorized to approve them, and how they will be recorded.

Measuring Project Activities

Measuring performance is a critical factor in optimizing performance. Consistent Monitoring and Control measures are required to stay on track.

Understand why you are here?

Project performance, on the surface, seems easy to measure; just track time, cost and scope and it’s done.

As part of optimizing your execution, you must perform certain key activities

Time Management
Cost Management
Quality Management
Change Management
Risk Management
Procurement Management
Acceptance Management
Stakeholder Engagement
Communication Management

What processes are included in project execution?

Execution Kick-Off

The Project Manager can begin the phase activities following the completion of all planning activities including approval of the PMP, functional specifications & project funding.

Acquire Project team

The project manager takes the necessary steps to secure the human resources needed to complete the project. Next, they create resource calendars and allocate resources based on negotiations with the involved business units and resource pool managers.

Develop Project Team

The project manager evaluates each individual’s skill set to ensure that every team member has the proper skills for each upcoming project phase. Additionally, your training plan, schedule, and costs also come in handy, as described in the planning phase.

Project leaders that can align their vision and work with their teams will successfully deliver key programs and projects. The alignment of vision and strategy to implementation will help you close those gaps.

Executing THE Project Management Plan

The project manager executes the project management plan activities by performing the activities contained within each of the plans such as Communication Plan, Risk management plan, etc.

The project manager will direct the various technical and organizational resources that exist in the project to execute the work defined in the project management plans.

Conducting Status Review Meetings (PSR)

Project status meetings help project managers review updates from team members. They allow managers to assess what the team has accomplished so far and compare it with the planned activities.

They allow project managers in the assessment of current problem areas and project risk areas; as well as communicating critical project information with quick feedback. Having these project status meetings also eliminates the communication problem that arises out of an assumption or belief that “everyone knows what’s going on in this project”. Often team members do not know, because they are busy with their own tasks.

The project execution phase often reveals unanticipated problems or issues, so project leaders must anticipate them and pivot by making tactical changes.

Update Project Schedule and Management plans

In most organizations, the project management team is the group of people responsible for updating the project plan. For instance, the project plan serves many purposes for the project manager. Firstly, it records what has occurred on the project. Additionally, it illustrates what is happening on the project right now. Finally, it prepares the project team by showing what will be coming up.

Keeping the plan current is an important role of the project manager (or project administrator). Project updates focus on the three project management constraints, cost, time and scope. An effective project manager knows that a change in one of these areas results in changes in the other two. A current project plan will show the effect of these changes on the overall project.

The project team must record and get approval for any changes or updates to the previously defined plan. They should also include revision history information for audit purposes. Failing to maintain an accurate or updated plan significantly affects the overall success of the project.

Quality Assurance

In the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), the Executing process group includes Quality Assurance, which continues throughout the project. During this process, project teams audit quality requirements and evaluate results from quality control measurements to confirm that they use the right quality standards and operational definitions. This process helps teams improve their overall quality performance.

Acceptance of Deliverables

Acceptance criteria for project deliverables clearly establish in advance an agreed-upon standard of performance or capability that the user will accept in a specific deliverable. Moreover, the Performance Plan developed in the Project Planning Phase further articulates the project deliverables and acceptance criteria.

These criteria serve as key guidelines for the design team to develop a solution that meets user expectations.

The execution phase ends when the user has agreed to accept the deliverable(s) in the state that they exist. The acceptance criterion is the standard that the user uses to judge if each deliverable is satisfactory.

In some cases, the deliverable may not meet all acceptance criteria but, from an overall view, the deliverable will meet the requirements of the user. The user must authenticate acceptance of each deliverable. The user will also identify any issues that remain outstanding and the agreed to plan for resolution of any outstanding issues.

Complete Execution Phase Review

The project manager contacts all participating stakeholders to review and document lessons learned in the execution phase. Then, a formal Phase Review form is filled out and sent to the Project Sponsor for approval.

It is basically to seek permission to proceed to the next phase and closure of the existing phase. The team reviews, approves all deliverables, documents pending issues with a resolution plan, and updates relevant plans and documents.

Once you have the phase review approved you officially proceed to the next phase!

Planning in Project Management

Posted on September 6, 2025November 6, 2025 by os_admin

As we progress with Project Planning, we must now shift our focus to two very significant aspects of project management – Quality and Risks.

Quality Management Plan

What is Quality?

As per the 6th Edition of the PMBOK; Quality is “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements, decrease rework & costs, increase productivity as well as stakeholder satisfaction.”

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines quality as – “the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.”

If you take a closer look at both the definitions it is evident that conformance to requirements, fit for use and deliver the intended value to the customer, sponsor and or stakeholders involved is the true indicator of quality.

And hence, it is safe to state that the fundamental need is to deliver a product or a service that is in accordance with the requirements & specifications as defined at the beginning of the project and directly meets/exceeds the customer expectations.

This also makes it clear for us that Quality is not a one-time activity. It is a fundamental principle that must be attended to right from project initiation through closure.

And yes, Quality is everyone’s responsibility right from the top to the bottom of the project chain – Sponsors, stakeholders, Project Managers, Project Teams and the organization as a whole.

Similarly let us take a look at Quality Management.

What is Quality Management?

Quality Management is a continuous repetitive process of evaluating quality and updating processes till each deliverable meets the required quality standards or metrics as defined by the customer or project sponsor.

As stated earlier, delivering a project with quality also needs better coordination among the project manager, project team and the business sponsor. There must be well-defined and agreed quality metrics, processes and governance in place that explain how quality will be delivered, measured, maintained and accepted by the customer.

Project Quality Management has 3 main processes

Quality Planning
Quality Assurance
Quality Control

Quality Planning

Quality Planning is much more than striking the balance among scope, time and cost. We undertake a project to deliver improvements—either enhancing an existing product, service, or process, or creating something new that provides the organization with the missing links.

To ensure we deliver improvement, the team must define key quality metrics and checklists and establish a baseline for quality. It is imperative that everyone on the project have the same understanding of what quality means for this particular project

As part of the Quality Planning you deploy various Tools and Techniques like

Cost-Benefit Analysis
Cost of Quality
Design of Experiments
Benchmarking
Interviews
Brainstorming

It is very important for a Project Managers to understand which tools suit them the best to establish the credibility of their delivery and quality. This also begets the fact that sponsor buy-in is very important and hence there must be an established link between the tools and the metrics you define as part of your Quality Planning.

Quality Assurance

This aspect of quality management is all about evidences of the quality measures in play. For a typical IT or Software development project it would be your test plan and test cases and the carious testing measures that would be deployed.

Quality assurance is all about continuous process improvement. This includes the investigation or root-cause analysis of issues within processes as well as continual assessment of which steps in a process are adding value.

The project team implements Quality Assurance at the very beginning of the implementation phase to identify errors and defects as early as possible.

One of the most popular tools the team uses is the Deming Cycle, named after quality guru Edward Deming, also known as PDCA – Plan, Do, Check, Act.

Similarly, the project team conducts Quality Audits to review and improve quality management activities. Consultants or external groups usually perform these audits.

The team then resolves any detected issues or problems through corrective actions approved by the relevant change control processes.

Also do note that quality assurance also covers all associated processes involved in managing the project along with the product or service planned for delivery.

Summarily, Quality Assurance assures the sponsors that safeguards are in place to make sure that the expected levels of quality will be reached to produce quality outputs.

Quality Control

Quality control is all about planned deliverables versus actual. It is a direct comparison of the output with the requirements or agreed goals.

With the right quality control measures in place you identify the problems and improve your output. And this is applicable to your scope, cost and schedule.

Similar to Quality Planning, Quality Control also uses some common tools and techniques for its effectiveness such as

Cause and Effect – the famous Fishbone or Ishikawa diagram
Control Charts
Pareto Charts
Histograms etc.

The central theme here is data analysis. Continuous monitoring of the identified quality metrics and their performance to identify outliers. And more so to get the right picture to make well informed decisions at the right time and avoiding knee-jerk reactions from the sponsors and stakeholders.

Continuous process monitoring and improvements aids in developing the right processes that aid in delivery of quality products and services.

Risk Management Plan

A risk is defined as an uncertain event or condition, that if occurs has a positive or a negative impact on the project. And what makes it furthermore tricky is that fact that risks can be man-made, natural or statutory in nature.

Risk management involves planning, identifying, analyzing, responding to, and controlling risks on a project. The risk plan lists all potential risks, their ranking or priority, preventive actions, and a process for tracking them.

Risk management follows specific core principles. When performing a risk assessment, the areas outlined by ISO should be included.

The process should create value

It should be an integral part of the organizational process
It should factor into the overall decision-making process
It must explicitly address uncertainty
It should be systematic and structured
It should be based on the best available information
It should be tailored to the project
It must take into account human factors
It should be transparent and all-inclusive
It should be dynamic and adaptable to change
It should be continuously monitored and improved upon as the project moves forward

When first addressing a risk management procedure for a project, take note of the aforementioned principles to ensure that your specific assessment is matching up with the core ideals as defined by ISO.

Risk Management Steps

Risk Identification

We must identify risks as early as possible. Once we identify them, the team records all risks in a Risk Register and shares it with relevant stakeholders. The team also reviews risks during regular checkpoint and status meetings to prevent any unwanted surprises.

Risk Analysis & Evaluation Here you do a quantitative and qualitative analysis of your identified risks. Most importantly, the probability, severity and impact of the risks are evaluated and prioritized.

Also, the analysis helps you with defining your contingency and management funds to cater to costs as a result of the occurrence of the risks.

Risk Handling Risk Handling is all about mitigating risks. You plan for the corrective actions to be taken to deal with the risk occurrence. As stated earlier a risk may have a Positive or a Negative impact on your project and hence you need to prepare your Risk Responses accordingly.

For any anticipated negative impact you plan to

Mitigate: Entire focus is to reduce or prevent entirely the chance of risk occurrence &its impact.
Avoid: Complete elimination of the threat. For example, changing the project management plan.
Transfer: Transfer the risk to a third party; e.g. insurance.
Accept: Acknowledge the risk and document it, but do not take any action to mitigate it or its effect.

Risk Control Risk monitoring and controlling or risk review is an iterative process that uses progress status reports and deliverable status to monitor and control risks. Various status reports, such as quality reports, progress reports, and follow-up reports, enable this process.

Risk Reviews are an integral part of your overall project monitoring. The Risk Register I duly updated all throughout to document any changes, actions, remediation done for the identified risks.
Matured organizations hold separately planned risk review meetings at a frequency determined by the overall risk level of a project.

Benefits of Risk Management PlanPrevention is always better than cure!Active risk management efforts helps you to

Successfully deliver project outcomes with minimal obstacles
Prevents exhaustion of project quality, schedule, resources and costs
Avoid risks and threats entirely
Gain valuable experience to deal with future crisis
Better handle on risk management overall as an organization
And helps build organization’s reputation
Improves overall project efficiency

Following each Project Planning process with the right intent builds discipline, shows customer care, and ensures commitment to project deliverables.

Planning in Project Management

Posted on September 6, 2025November 6, 2025 by os_admin

Explore and understand the most crucial phase of the Project Management Lifecycle in this chapter – Project Planning. Planning in any endeavor is an extensive exercise.

Project Planning results in lots and lots of plan and when all these individual plan come together, you see the grandiose image of your end objective.

This master plan gives you a clear picture of your product or service once you execute all your plans in letter and spirit.

In very simple terms, by the end of the Project Planning phase you come to know

What will be delivered
When will it be delivered
How will you get it
Who will help you get
How much will you have to spend
What risks can impact your end result
How to handle those risks

Thus essentially the single most important output of Project Planning is – “Project Management Plan”.

Project Management Plan consists of multiple other plans that cover your stakeholders, requirements, scope, deliverables, resources, staffing, vendors and procurement, quality, costs and risks etc. A project management plan would majorly consist of:

Communication management plan
Project scope management plan
Schedule management plan
Staffing management plan
Quality management plan
Risk management plan
Cost management plan
Process improvement plan
Procurement management plan

“if you do not know where you are going you neither know how to get there nor even when you have arrived!”

Project Management Plan

The Project Plan is the living document of your project. It is your “single source of truth” as it has everything that the project is about!

All project participants, contributors, impacted parties etc. are listed in the project management plan. It is the guiding light if you may that steers your project through execution, implementation, monitoring, governance & control.

It is the bible that houses each and every change, amendment made to the project through execution along with the entire scope, schedule and associated costs.

Note: The Project Manager is the author of the Project Management plan and he takes inputs from the project charter, business case in consultation with the subject matter experts (SMEs), project teams, stakeholders, sponsors and senior leaders as applicable.

As the Planning phase progresses the Project Manager is required to

Define baselines in terms of scope, time and cost
Review the baselines with the project stakeholders and obtain approvals
Define and agree on the governance model to be followed for the project
Receive approvals for the relevant resources and staffing
Define and share the communication management plan
Maintain the project mgmt. plan up to date to reflect every approved change made to the original plan.

Nevertheless, getting each and every vital info recorded, reviewed and shared is a tiring job and the project success is hugely dependent on the Planning phase. A poorly drafted project management plan is the sure shot recipe for absolute failure.

And it is pretty evident that matured organizations spend a huge amount of time and efforts to ensure they have a solid plan before they begin execution.

Communication Management Plan

Communication if well managed can work wonders for you and your team. It is always recommended that you set some ground rules around project activity communication.

Everyone in the team MUST know the “authorized” recipients of the information along with the expected timelines and intervals for every project communication.

For any communication plan to be effective it must

Address the stakeholder expectations
Ensure the involved project participants receive the right info at the right time
Facilitates team collaboration and prevents communication breakdown at all times
Have well defined Communication format, modes, frequency and audience

We must also remember that “one size fits all” never applies to project communication. For example, the project sponsor does not care about the number of lines of code written so far.

Also, make sure that your Communication Plan clearly indicates any assumptions and constraints taken into account. And we must update the plan as when these constraints are removed and assumptions clarified.

Project teams perform better when they review and share real-time project progress and status. With timely insights, they can take corrective actions, make informed decisions, and guide the project toward success.

Schedule Management Plan

We all know that project is an endeavor that must have a definite start and end. Thus it entails that each and every task required to complete the project must therefore have defined state and end too.

Schedule Management Plan (SMP) includes the list of activities that will be performed during the course of the project by specified resources within timelines.

The SMP clearly defines what we need to do, who will do it, and when they will do it. We may not always create an exact schedule, but we do build a broad view of available resources and the time required to complete each activity. This helps us establish a general baseline and timeline for the project.

There are various mechanisms and techniques used across organizations to define and maintain project schedule and the most widely used ones are Gantt Charts and Critical Path Method (CPM).

Developing the Project Schedule is the worst nightmare a project manager can have. Estimating the “right” time requirement for each activity is critical. One need to pay attention to every tiny detail involved to make as accurate an estimation possible.

If you allocate very tight timelines then you have a team working under a lot of stress and pressure leading to quality loss. It’s a given because of the simple fact that – Focus shifts from getting the task over than getting it done with quality.

Similarly if you are too lax and add an unreasonable buffer the entire project budget is skewed. So either ways the Project Manager is between a hard surface and a rock!

A detailed Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) breaks down each activity into manageable tasks to ensure transparency and accountability. When we lay out the WBS clearly, we avoid missing key activities and prevent negative impacts on time and cost. Estimating smaller tasks is always easier than estimating large ones, which improves our chances of creating accurate and reliable time and cost estimates.

Task dependencies are another important aspect. Once you start breaking down your tasks, you can easily relate to the sequences of those individual chunks and also linkages and interdependencies among them. This helps you understand which activities can be done simultaneously & which will be done later thereby giving you a thorough glimpse of your resource and time requirements.

Upon completion of the above 2 activities you now need to focus on Time and Resource Estimation. Here comes the critical aspects of expertise, productivity and unforeseen events. A seasoned Project Manager would definitely account for skillfulness of the resources involved, perceived risks, leaves and holidays along with resource availability. Risks and Resource Availability are significant factors that have a direct impact on your project progress and delivery. You must account for the unavailability of key resources during the project, as less skilled team members may step in. Although this may slightly reduce costs, it affects the project timelines.

But rest assured — when you address the above three factors in your Schedule Management Plan, you set yourself up for an on-time and within-budget project delivery without compromising quality.

Resource & Staffing Management Plan

Resources are the backbone of all organizations as successful delivery of the strategic initiatives rest on their shoulders. Resourcing and Staffing if not done adequately will result in utter chaos not only in the project but for the entire organization as a whole.

While engaged in building your Staffing Plan one must have absolute clarity of the

Project deliverables and objectives
Skills required to deliver the desired product or service
Number of resources required
Availability of the identified resources
Absolute clarity of the roles and responsibilities of each of the resources
Governance and Organization policies concerning the resources
Right mix of internal and external resources
Duration for which the resources would be needed
Well defined entry and exit criteria of the resources
Rewards and recognition programs for the project resources

Having clarity of the above aspects will help devise a robust plan that will ensure you get the right resources for the desired duration. All pertinent questions from the Sponsors or Stakeholders can better answered to allay fears around the resourcing costs and time.

Note: Executive buy-in is very critical for getting the resource approvals and preventing any mid-way pull leading to project collapse.

Moving on, we must also realize that resources include equipment, materials, infrastructure as well as the obvious human resources. You must account for the right quantity, duration, and quality of resources, as this directly influences the project’s success.

As a project manager, one must also be adept in answering “What’s in it for me – (WIIFM)” It is important for enhancing resource motivation and productivity. Also, projects must aim for skill enrichment of the organization as a whole by training their project resources.

Include a thorough training plan in your staffing plan, and clearly outline the training programs, duration, required resources, training vendors, and costs.

With a robust Resourcing Plan, organizations benefit by having low resource churn, increased knowledge & skills development, motivation and enhanced teamwork.

Cost Management Plan

Every project incurs costs, and we expect to deliver it within the approved budget. A financial management plan usually includes cost budgeting, cost control, monitoring, and reporting.

Organizations typically choose either a top-down approach or a bottom-up approach when they allocate project budgets.

In the top-down approach, you already know the available budget, and you must complete the project within this allocated cost.

Whereas in the Bottoms-up approach you begin by estimating cost for each module or activity required for project completion and then add them up to reach the final cost. Though more accurate this approach may lead to cost over-runs.

Once you begin with the cost estimation and planning it is best to start with the core costs such as

Labor
Equipment and material
Licensing and legal
Development
Contractor and Vendors
Maintenance and Support & then expand it with a contingency fund for known/unknown risks and price variations through the project duration.

One of the key goals in any project is to deliver within budget and maintain profitability. We must actively control and monitor costs to achieve this. Always break down your project budget into time-bound phases. This approach helps you see the cost required for each phase and how long you will use those funds.

This method also gives you a major advantage. When new requests or scope creep arise, you can re-estimate the costs to determine whether you can manage the extra work within the existing budget. If the budget cannot cover it, you go back to the customer or sponsor and submit a change request for additional funds.

Effective Time Management leads to easier cost control. It is in the best interest of the project to meet deadlines and deliver milestones as per plan. The better your time management, better is the cost control.

In the end timely reporting of cost variances and changes also helps maintain the project’s financial well-being. A periodic planned vs. actual expenditure report goes a long way in proper expense tracking and management.

You are always in the know of your project expenses and can prevent leakages in terms of equipment, material etc. overruns.

There are quite a few financial reports that we will review in the upcoming modules. And we will explore Risk Management and Quality Management in the next chapter.

Initiation in Project Management Life Cycle

Posted on September 6, 2025November 5, 2025 by os_admin

The Project Management Lifecycle is kick-started with the crucial Project Initiation Phase. The entire basis of why you should be developing/delivering a product, service, or event is formed with the Project Initiation.

It is important to note that a Project Manager is duly appointed to the project, which also signifies executive intent. In a way, he is the first resource assigned to the project.

The project manager needs to establish the business case for the project; ensure that the proposed outcome is aligned with the organization’s strategic goals; prepare an initial budget and timeline; and also involve relevant stakeholders, sponsors, and identify team members who will work on the project once the business case is approved.

Key Project Initiation Activities

Develop a Business Case
Undertake a feasibility study
Establish the Project charter
Appoint the project team
Perform phase review

Developing Business Case

A business case is used when expenditure on a project is required. Once a business case is prepared, it is shared with a sponsor or investor for approval. After approvals are obtained, the required resources and funding are also received.

What does a business case include?

1. Benefits: The value to be delivered by the undertaking is clearly defined and shared with the customer, sponsor, stakeholder, and team members. The key objectives, strategic gains (operational and or economic), and associated profits are well illustrated during initiation for absolute clarity and expectation management.

2. Options: Options include the alternative and other courses of action that are considered as the project plan is designed and developed.

3. Time and Cost: It includes the determination of the project cost and time required to complete the project.

4. Cost-benefit analysis: Cost-benefit analysis describes how the cost of a project is balanced with the return. For example, due to a specific reason, your project needs some additional resources and some new systems. This is where the cost-benefit analysis is done. It helps justify the additional investment and show the value and or return generated from this investment.

Project Feasibility Study

The purpose of a Feasibility Study is to identify the problem and its solution in a project and to check if the planned solution meets the stated business requirements. In other words, if you are not sure whether your solution will deliver the targeted outcome, then a Project Feasibility Study will help gain that clarity on those solutions

During the Feasibility Study, a variety of assessment methods are followed. The outcome of the Feasibility Study is a confirmed solution for implementation.

What are the factors that should be considered for testing feasibility?

Technical Feasibility

Technically skilled resources are available – Having the right mix of resources assigned to the project is important. A true requirement of skill mapping is to ensure the right resources with the right skills are available to meet the project responsibilities.

Required technologies are available – We must review and define the relevant hardware, software, equipment, licenses, regulatory approvals, if applicable, etc. are available to deliver the project.

Economic Feasibility

While determining economic feasibility, we need to consider the following factors

Sponsors should have an ample amount of capital to invest – Even if we have sufficient amount of resources and required technology, we must have the required investments to maintain the resources. It is crucial that we have the sponsor’s buy-in for the execution of the project. Unavailability of the required funds will lead to project delay and or failure.
Will the investment generate the Targeted ROI? – Projects are meant to generate capital benefits or business value to your organization. So it is important to analyze whether the investment in the project will provide business benefits to your organization.
Contingency Funds – Our project budget must also have a certain contingency fund allocated. And we need to see how big that bucket is and if that is enough to bail us through any significant issues or risks.

Legal Feasibility

The undertaking must meet and comply with all applicable regulatory and statutory rules and laws

Data protection or social media laws -It must be ascertained that no data privacy laws are breached, for e.g., while dealing with data-sensitive projects. Any associated non-disclosure agreements, etc., must be thoroughly reviewed and put in place as applicable to the undertaking.
Zonal laws – If we are planning to construct a mall in a place, we need to check whether the zone has the required permissions to build malls. A feasibility study might reveal the organization’s ideal location isn’t zoned for that type of business.

Operational Feasibility

This assessment involves undertaking a study to analyze and determine whether—and how well—the organization benefits by completing the project. Operational feasibility studies also analyze how a project plan can satisfy the requirements identified in the analysis phase.

Scheduling Feasibility

This assessment is the most important for project success. After all, a project may fail if it is not completed on time. In scheduling feasibility, we estimates how much time the project will take to complete and also we need check whether do we have estimated time to invest in the project.

Establish Project charter

Project Charter contains the objectives of a project. This statement also sets out detailed of project goals, roles and responsibilities, identifies the main stakeholders, and the level of authority of a project manager.

It also acts as a guideline for future projects and is an important material in the organization’s knowledge management system.

How to write project charter?

Vision: You need have a clear idea on the scope of the project. Describe each of the deliverables the project is tasked to produce. Once you’ve gotten all of them down, you’ve got a foothold on your charter and are ready to move on.
Organize: When you’re building a structure for your charter there are four subsets you’re going to need to identify. They are Customer/end users, stake holders, roles. Now you need to define the lines of reporting between these various roles in the project. Use a project organization chart to do this.
Implementation: Once vision and organization structure is defined, now we need develop a plan to implement them. While implementing, a plan we need keep 3 factors in the mind-they are Milestone dependencies and resource. We are going to learn more about this in the Initiation module.
Risks, Issues & Budget: No charter is complete without covering the potential risks and issues that can derail a project. This includes assumptions and constraints related to the project. Risks can be natural, man-made, governmental and regulatory.

A risk is a potential issue that may or may not happen in a project. Risk is not always negative, as there is such a thing as positive risk, and you should prepare for that as well.

An issue is something that has already occurred in the project. Basically, a risk is a “perceived” issue and an issue is “an event with a negative impact” that has already occurred.

Appoint the project team

According to Wikipedia, a project team is a group of members from different functions and are assigned to activities for the same project. A team can be divided into sub-teams according to need.

Usually project teams are only used for a defined period of time. They are disbanded after the project is deemed complete. Due to the nature of the specific formation and disbandment, project teams are usually in organizations.

Project teams need to have the right combination of skills, abilities, and personality types to achieve collaborative success.

How to build a project team

Project Type

We need to understand the nature, required skills and resources for successful completion of the project. We need to ascertain if the project is manual labor intensive, or one that needs high IQ and skills. And we also need to be aware if such a project has ever been undertaken by the organization and how mature

High Speed Delivery

We need to understand the nature, required skills and resources for successful completion of the project. We need to ascertain if the project is manual labor-intensive or one that needs high IQ and skills. And we also need to be aware if such a project has ever been undertaken by the organization and how mature

Project SMEs

Always strive to strike balance with the resource mix. You may not always have all the top talents available for your projects. Even if they do, it will highly skew your resource cost thereby stretching your budget. Being a smart Project Manager, you must ensure you have the right Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) available to the project when needed plus enough resources who can execute under the guidance of the SMEs and leads.

Right mix of experience and energy is what you must aim for a project team!

The Client

Know Your Customer (KYC) – There is no alternative to it. Before beginning any engagement, we must spend considerable effort and thought to understand our customer. He is the one paying for the project and will sign on the project closure. Be very clear of how your clients like to be approached, informed and what is their desired communication mode and frequency.

Plan to put your seasoned client management personnel at the forefront for exceptional customer support and satisfaction. Having personnel who have worked with a diverse clientele and can anticipate customer needs in advance would prove hugely beneficial to the project manager.

A Balance in Skill Set

Experience counts and so does passion. Age doesn’t alone determine experience. Some people may have worked across several roles making them great multi-tasker while others may have specialized in one specific area making them your subject matter expert.

Perform phase review

We need to determine review criteria to evaluate each completed project task and inform team members of expectations regarding satisfactory performance. We also need to secure additional project personnel if your review reveals the need for additional resources to work on assignments to bring the project to completion on time.

Now to get going with your project planning refer to the upcoming chapter.

Project Management Methodologies

Posted on September 6, 2025November 6, 2025 by os_admin

Getting your team organized around a project is often easier said than done. Fortunately, following a project management methodology can help you organize your project into a structured, streamlined process. It makes team collaboration more efficient and projects become better organized.

Project management experts agree that most projects benefit when a recognized methodology is followed. While there are dozens of project management methods available, the majority of projects can be managed efficiently by following some popular project management methodologies below.

Agile Methodology

Agile project management is an approach based on delivering requirements iteratively and incrementally throughout the project life cycle. At the core of agile is the requirement to exhibit central values and behaviors of trust, flexibility, empowerment and collaboration.

Agile process flow

Concept – Projects are envisioned and prioritized

Inception – Team members are identified, funding is put in place, and initial environments and requirements are discussed

Iteration/Construction – The development team works to deliver working software based on iteration requirements and feedback

Release – 2QA (Quality Assurance) testing, internal and external training, documentation development, and final release of the iteration into production

Production – Ongoing support of the software

Retirement – End-of-life activities, including customer notification and migration

This view presents the full Agile lifecycle model within the enterprise. In any enterprise there may be projects operating simultaneously, multiple sprints/iterations being logged on different product lines, and a variety of customers, both external and internal, with a range of business needs.

Benefit of Agile methodology

Agile approaches empower those involved; build accountability; encourage diversity of ideas; allowing the early release of benefits; and promotion of continuous improvement.

It helps build client and user engagement because changes are incremental and evolutionary rather than revolutionary: it can therefore be effective in supporting cultural change that is critical to the success of most transformation projects.

It allows decision ‘gremlins’ to be tested and rejected early: the tight feedback loops provide benefits in agile that are not as evident in waterfall.

Disadvantages of Agile methodology

Agile project management has its disadvantages such as less easy identification of project risks and poor management of resources.

A flexible system like Agile can make it difficult to focus and push your projects to completion if you’re not careful. There’s less set in stone, and no process to make sure the project is continuing smoothly, making it easy for projects to lose direction.

Scrum Methodology

Scrum project management is a methodology for managing software delivery that comes under the broader umbrella of agile project management. It provides a lightweight process framework that embraces iterative and incremental practices,

helping organizations deliver working software more frequently. Projects progress via a series of iterations called sprints; at the end of each sprint the team produces a potentially deliverable product increment.

Scrum process flow

Backlog Refinement Meeting (also called “Backlog Grooming”):

This meeting is much like the planning phase of TPM, and is held on day one of each sprint—you’ll look over the tasks left in the project, things left behind from previous sprints, and will decide what to focus on. The PO makes the call on how to prioritize tasks, and this ultimately determines how efficient the sprints are.

Sprint Planning Meeting:

Once the PO decides what to focus on, this meeting helps the team understand what they’ll be building and why. You could share “user stories,” describing features from the customer’s point of view, or could simply divide tasks for each team to work on during the sprint.

Daily Scrum Meetings:

Simple daily meetings that should only last about 15 minutes, Scrum meetings are a way for team members to update each other on progress. This meeting is not the time or place to air issues—those will go to the Scrum master outside of the daily meetings—but instead is a place to keep the ball rolling.

Sprint Review:

Since a potentially shippable item is expected at the end of each sprint, the Scrum framework naturally places an emphasis on review. Team members will present what they’ve completed to all stakeholders. While this meeting pushes accountability, its goal is to make sure that the sprint’s completed items match up with business and user goals.

Sprint Retrospective:

Held immediately after the sprint review meeting, the Sprint retrospective is full of collaborative feedback. Looking at successes and holdups, everyone decides what is working (what they should continue doing) and what isn’t working (what they should stop doing). This should inspire the focus of the next sprint.

Benefits of Scrum methodology

Scrum can help teams complete project deliverables quickly and efficiently:

Scrum ensures effective use of time and money
Large projects are divided into easily manageable sprints
Developments are coded and tested during the sprint review
Works well for fast-moving development projects
The team gets clear visibility through scrum meetings
Scrum, being agile, adopts feedback from customers and stakeholders
Short sprints enable changes based on feedback a lot more easily
The individual effort of each team member is visible during daily scrum meeting.

Disadvantages of Scrum methodology

Scrum often leads to scope creep, due to the lack of a definite end date
The chances of project failure are high if individuals aren’t very committed or cooperative
Adopting the Scrum framework in large teams is challenging
The framework can be successful only with experienced team members
Daily meetings sometimes frustrate team members
If any team member leaves in the middle of a project, it can have a huge negative impact on the project
Quality is hard to implement, until the team goes through aggressive testing process.

Waterfall methodology

Waterfall project management is a sequential, linear process of project management. It consists of several discrete phases. No phase begins until the prior phase is complete, and each phase’s completion is terminal—waterfall management does not allow you to return to a previous phase. The only way to revisit a phase is to start over at phase one.

Waterfall process flow

Requirements– where we analyze business needs and document what software needs to do
Design– where we choose the technology, create diagrams, and plan software architecture
Coding– where we figure out how to solve problems and write code
Testing– where we make sure the code does what it supposed to do without breaking anything.
Operations – where we deploy the code to production environment and provide support

Advantages of the waterfall methodology

1. Extensive documentation

Because you can’t go back to a previous activity, you’re forced to create a comprehensive documentation from the start, listing all the requirements you can think of.

2. Knowledge stays in the organization

When you have extensive documentation, knowledge won’t get lost if someone leaves. Also, you don’t have to spend time on training new members as they can familiarize with the project by reading the documentation.

3. Team members can better plan their time

Because everyone knows in advance on what they’ll work, they can be assigned on multiple projects at the same time.

4. Easy to understand

Waterfall projects are divided in discrete and easily understandable phases. As a result, project management is straightforward and the process is easily understandable even to non-developers.

5. Client knows what to expect

Clients can know in advance the cost and timeline of the project so they can plan their business activities and manage cash flow according to the plan.

6. Client input not required

After requirements phase, client input is minimal (save for occasional reviews, approvals, and status meetings). This means you don’t have coordinate with them and wait for when they’re available.

7. Easier to measure

Because waterfall projects are simple, it’s much easier to measure your progress by quickly looking at a Gantt chart.

8. Better design

Products have a higher cohesion because during the design phase you know everything that must be taken into account. There is no one-feature-at-a-time problem that leads to usability problems down the road.

Disadvantages of the waterfall methodology

1. No going back

Once you’re finished with one activity, consequently, it becomes difficult and expensive to go back and make changes. As a result, this puts huge pressure on the planning.

2. No room for error during requirements phase

Everything relies heavily on the requirements phase an,d if you make an error, the project is doomed.

3. Deadline creep

Once one activity is late, all the other activities are late too, including the project deadline.

4. QA too late to be useful

Testing is done at the end of the project, which means that developers can’t improve how they write code based on QA feedback.

5. Bug-ridden software

Because the testing is done at the end, most teams tend to rush the testing in order to deliver the project on time and hit their incentives. These short-term wins lead to sub-par quality and long-term problems.

6. Not what the client actually needs

Most of the time, clients can’t articulate what they need until they see what they don’t need. If the client realizes they need more than they initially thought, the project plan will need a major overhaul (as well as the budget).

7. Unexpected problems

Designers can’t foresee all the problems that will arise from their design, and once those problems surface, it’s very difficult to fix them.

Project Management Life Cycle

Posted on September 6, 2025November 1, 2025 by os_admin

Project Management Life Cycle

We all know that Project is an endeavor that has a definite start and end. Thus, it makes it all the more important to have well defined life cycle in place. Life cycle is helpful in laying out transparent and time bound entry and exit points throughout the project stages.

Time boxing the stages ensures we stay on track and deliver with quality. One of the key objectives of any project is always having a balance among the triple constraints – Time, Cost & Quality. The better the balance, better the chances of the project being successful.

No matter what project it is that you’re preparing for, the project management life cycle can assist you and your team in narrowing the project’s focus, keeping its objectives in order and finishing the project on time, on budget and with minimum surprises (unwanted)!

PMI is the world’s largest nonprofit membership association for the project management profession. It has set the standards for project, program, and portfolio management and offers training and certifications. The gold standard of certification from the association is the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

A project management life cycle as defined in the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) by Project Management Institute (PMI) consists of 5 phases:

Project Initiation
Project Planning
Project Execution
Project Monitoring and Control
Project Closure

Project Initiation

Initiation is first phase of project management life cycle where the feasibility and the business value of the project are determined.

The key outcome of the Initiating phase is our “Project Charter“! It is the bible of your Project!

The answer to all your project disputes, concerns, and doubts are covered in the Project Charter. So why do you think this is such an important document?

As common logic says – before we undertake any endeavor we perform certain background checks, initial research, execution feasibility, and commercial viability and then decide if it should be undertaken at all.

And exactly that is what is covered in our Project Charter

Business Case or Vision
Goals / Projected Benefits
Identify Stakeholders
Project Scope (In-scope and Out-of-scope items)
Identifying Deliverables
Identifying Risks
Defining project resources, cost &budget

It is quite evident why a Project Charter is the most important document of any project.

It explains :

Why a project was undertaken? What problems need to be addressed?
What specific strategic gaps and initiatives need to be served?
What needs, objectives and profits were served by this project?
Who are the key stakeholders, sponsors and project team?
What are the roles and responsibilities of each person associated with the project?
What does the project entail? What will be exactly delivered and left out of the deliverables?
What is to be delivered, at what time and within how much cost?
And lastly who is in charge and authorized to run the project?

PMP Tip– PMI gives a lot of significance to the Project Charter& has a dedicated process named “Develop Project Charter” in the Initiating Process group / Integration Management Knowledge Area.

Planning

Failing to plan is planning to fail!

We all have heard it, know it, yet often fail to implement it.

Planning is the second yet most important phase in the project management life cycle. Project planning is at the heart of the project life cycle, and tells everyone involved where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.

The planning phase is when the project plans are documented, the project deliverables and requirements are defined, and the project schedule is created.

It involves creating a set of plans to help guide your team through the implementation and closure phases of the project.

The plans created during this phase will help you manage time, cost, quality, changes, risk, and related issues. They will also help you control staff and external suppliers to ensure that you deliver the project on time, within budget, and within schedule.

Planning includes

Creating a Project Plan

The Project Plan is you project blueprint and a project manager’s best friend. It helps the Project Manager to be in-sync with the roadmap and maintain progress accordingly by taking informed decisions at the right time.

Creating a Resource Plan

A Resource Plan provides information about the level of resources that is needed to complete a project. A properly documented Resource Plan will specify the exact quantities of labor, equipment and materials needed to complete your project. At here, we also consider the skill of the resources that is whether the resources have the relevant expertise required for the project.

Creating a Financial Plan

A Financial Plan helps set budget for your project. To deliver your project within budget, you need to produce the project deliverables at a total cost which does not exceed allotted budget.

Creating a Quality Plan

Quality Planning is an essential part of any project. It helps you to monitor and control the level of quality produced by the project, to ensure that you meet the required quality targets.

Creating a Risk Plan

A Risk Plan helps you to identify the potential risks and how to mitigate them. The Risk Management Plan is created as part of the Risk Planning process. The risk plan contains lists of all potential risks, their ranking or level and priority, the preventive actions, along with a process for tracking them.

Creating an Acceptance Plan

The acceptance plan lists the tasks we design to meet customer requirements. It outlines the deliverables, the acceptance test activities, the criteria and standards we must satisfy, and the plan to complete each item.

Creating a Communication Plan

A communication plan explains how we share information with stakeholders. It lists what information we need to share with stakeholders, project members, and the PMO; when and how often we will share it; the communication methods we will use (email, stand-up meetings, weekly reviews, presentations, etc.); and where team members can access the relevant reports and documents.

Creating a Procurement Plan

Procurement planning is the process to decide what to buy, what are procedure should be followed to buy and sources from which required materials to be purchased.

Execution, Monitor and Control

This is the phase that is most commonly associated with project management. Execution is all about building deliverables that satisfy the customer. Team leaders make this happen by allocating resources and keeping team members focused on their assigned tasks.

Execution relies heavily on the planning phase. The work and efforts of the team during the execution phase are derived from the project plan.

The key tasks performed are

Assemble Execution Phase Project Team

Acquiring the required resources to work on the project.

Team Development

Dividing the resources into small teams to work on certain modules. For example, if you are working on website development, one team can be assigned for UI/UX design of the website, other team for the backend design, similar a team to perform testing and so on.

Assign Resources

Assigned skill or expert resources to the project. Obtaining the right resources for the project is crucial for project success. A high skill to requirement mapping will enable smoother and timely task execution.

Execute Project Management Plans

Set your schedule into action.

Direct and Manage Project Execution

This involves leading and performing the work defined in the project plan and implementing approved changes to achieve the project’s objectives.

Conduct Progress Status Meetings

Having periodic status checks helps keep the team motivated, stay on track, address any real or perceived threats in advance and take corrective measures as required.

Update Project Schedule and Management Plans

As the project moves forward, we must regularly update the schedule and plans to stay on track and meet the agreed timelines. However, you can skip this step if the project remains on schedule without adjustments.

Quality Assurance

Review tasks and deliverables are up to the mark or not. And what corrective actions are required to meet the defined quality guidelines.

Acceptance of Deliverables

Verify if the developed project meets the deliverables, fulfills all the standards and criteria set by the customer.

Complete Execution Phase Review

Lastly, ensure all the key execution activities are performed properly

Closure

So much time and effort is put into the planning of a project, it is often forgotten that the end of a project is equally important. There’s a lot of work involved even once a project is technically complete.

You handover all deliverables to your customers, relevant stakeholders, release the project into business as usual and handover to the operations team, free all your resources, return equipment and notify all of project closure.

Here are some associated tasks in the closure stage

Lessons Learnt

Managing a project isn’t only about tasks and resources, budget and deadlines, it’s an experience you can constantly learn from. While you should have been learning throughout the project, now is a great time to look back without the pressure and distractions that might have dulled your focus.

Gather the core team to invite feedback about what worked and what didn’t. Encourage honesty.

Clearly document the lessons you learned. Celebrate how you averted a major mishap and highlight the remedial actions that created a positive turnaround in the project. Identify what you missed, where you missed it, and record how those gaps impacted the project.

You can go back and look over the information for precedents when planning new projects; moreover, this helps you build stronger and more informed strategies. In addition, there’s a wealth of knowledge generated at every project closure, and, consequently, smart organizations share this valuable insight with great zeal to continuously improve future outcomes.

Complete paperwork

Acquiring required resources who can work on the project.

This includes a complete documentation of the project, approval from the stakeholders, Legal contracts of the projects should be verified and signed up by the stakeholders.

It also includes addressing outstanding payments and sending invoices for the payments. All dues must be settled, and vendor contracts must be closed before proceeding to project closure.

Release resources

This step formally returns resources to the project pool so they become available for new work. If contractors worked on the project, we release them and close their contracts after settling all dues

Archive documents

Archive all project documents so the organization can reference them in the future. We learn valuable lessons from every project, and keeping the documents organized in a shared portal or with the PMO helps everyone access that knowledge when needed. This practice protects the organization and supports quick resolution of future issues.

Hope you have now had a proper glimpse of the various project management phases and, moreover, an overview of their key outputs and how they help run projects successfully. Additionally, in the next chapters, we will look into each of the phases in further detail, so you can gain a deeper and more practical understanding