Editing Project management (section)

=== Project lifecycle ===
There are five phases to a project lifecycle; known as process groups.  Each process group represents a series of inter-related processes to manage the work through a series of distinct steps to be completed. This type of project approach is often referred to as "traditional"<ref name="wysocki">{{cite book |title=Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme |last=Wysocki |first=Robert K. |publisher=[[John Wiley & Sons]] |year=2013 |isbn=978-1118729168 |edition=Seventh }}</ref> or "[[Waterfall model|waterfall]]".<ref name="Roy70">{{cite journal|first=Winston W.|last=Royce|url=http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf|title=Managing the Development of Large Software Systems|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160315200930/http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf|archive-date=2016-03-15|journal=Technical Papers of Western Electronic Show and Convention (WesCon)|date=August 25–28, 1970|location=Los Angeles}}</ref> The five process groups are:[[File:Project Management (phases).png|thumb|right|320px|Typical development phases of an engineering project]]
# [[Project Initiation Documentation|Initiating]]
# [[project planning|Planning]]
# Executing
# Monitoring and Controlling
# Closing

Some industries may use variations of these project stages and rename them to better suit the organization. For example, when working on a [[brick-and-mortar]] design and construction, projects will typically progress through stages like pre-planning, conceptual design, schematic design, design development, construction drawings (or contract documents), and construction administration.

While the phased approach works well for small, well-defined projects, it often results in challenge or failure on larger projects, or those that are more complex or have more ambiguities, issues, and risks<ref name="Stellman05">{{Cite book|url=http://www.stellman-greene.com/aspm/|title=Applied Software Project Management|last1=Stellman|first1=Andrew|last2=Greene|first2=Jennifer|publisher=O'Reilly Media|year=2005|isbn=978-0-596-00948-9|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150209011617/http://www.stellman-greene.com/aspm/|archive-date=2015-02-09|url-status=dead}}</ref> - see the parodying 'six phases of a big project'.