Apply the project management cycle to provide structure

- While there are different project management governing bodies and methodologies, most projects tend to follow four basic phases. Vetting, planning, design and execution, and closeout. Let's discuss each one of these in more detail, and more importantly, highlight how they might be relevant for your work. If you were to ask most professionals, "What's the first step of managing a project?" Most people would probably say "Planning." And that's where they make a huge mistake, because the first step should be some sort of vetting. People find themselves working on dog projects all the time, because the idea was never appropriately vetted to determine whether it should advance to become a project in the first place. Projects require precious time, money, and resources, and every idea shouldn't automatically get the green light to become a project. Instead, during vetting, the appropriate stakeholders should analyze risk, evaluate anticipated benefits versus costs, weigh the cost of doing nothing, and ultimately decide whether a project is warranted. Careful vetting is designed to weed out the ill-conceived projects that end up being a colossal waste of time and resources. Now, once a project idea has received a green light, project planning should begin. This is where we should complete all those traditional planning activities, like pulling together the right team, establishing team norms and ground rules, developing schedules, documenting a project charter, confirming a plan for managing changes, and also managing suppliers, stakeholders, communications, and other key areas of the project. While there may be a temptation to skim on planning and jump right into execution, it's important for leaders to challenge that impulse and recognize the importance of taking appropriate time for planning. Think about major events, like the Olympics, that require years of planning for just a couple weeks of activity. Or a wedding, that can easily take six months of planning for just a few hours. As the saying goes, "If you fail to plan, plan to fail." The next phase of work is typically focused on designing, building, and or executing on the plan developed in the previous phase. This is where the team begins doing what was outlined in the project plan. We might be building a house, developing a new internal system, or even throwing a party. Indeed, this is when the deliverables are actually produced, and testing and deployment may occur for technical projects. Finally, during the closeout phase, you'll want to conduct a review of what worked well, and what you could possibly do differently next time. You might want to compare actuals to estimates to see how well the team estimated. You want to archive work products and outputs, wrap up any administrative details, and support team member transition to other work. While you may not need all the formality of traditional project management, it can be quite helpful to leverage this basic framework to ensure you're not skipping critical elements that could mean the difference between success and failure.