In this chapter of the Project Management course, we introduce the project lifecycle – initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and closure.

What is the initiation phase? What is involved in a business case? What does the scope cover? How to create a project charter? These are some of the questions we answer in the third section of the Project Management course. The chapter concludes with a case study.

Planning is a critical stage in project management. In this section, you will learn why it is important, what the cost of change in projects is, what to do before you start, and how to perform scope planning.

By this point, you should have outlined everything you need to do in the scope statement and prepared a high-level work breakdown structure and activity list. And this is just the beginning of the planning phase. This section of the Project Management course focuses on another key aspect timelines and schedules.

Budgeting is one of the most important parts of the planning phase. We discuss the budgeting process, procurement contract types, how to approach procuring non-financial resources, HR planning, and how to use a RACI matrix to assign roles.

In every well-managed project, it is imperative to plan expectations and risk management and control assumptions. In this part of the course, we go into more detail about these processes.

Every good project manager and business leader needs to learn how to deal with change requests. This is the topic of this section of the Project Management course.

Next, we explain how to organize meetings and manage them effectively and what to include in a kick-off meeting.

In this section, we explain the action-owner due date concept. A project diary is a document which keeps track of actions throughout the execution. The three dimensions to record are: what must be done, by whom, and until when.

A key part of project management is supervising the critical path. If it is delayed, then the whole project is delayed. This section covers what the manager must do to keep the ball rolling.

In this lesson of the Project Management course, we talk about defining a metric, setting a target, measuring performance, and taking action when the target is missed.

There are two main reasons for regular status reporting: 1) keep sponsors and senior stakeholders informed about the progress highlighting key issues, 2) keep work in order. To avoid inefficiencies, the project manager must keep up structured communication and coordination.

By this point in the Project Management course, you should have made it all the way to your goal. Now, all you need to do is go through the closure phase. This serves several purposes: 1) obtain formal acceptance of the deliverables; 2) communicate the project completion; 3) reflect on the lessons learnt; 4) celebrate success.