How Do You Eat an Elephant? The Project Phase Approach!

Projects can be very complex and span several months and involve various resources. Most team members often feel overwhelmed with the prospect of having to worry about timelines and tasks they need to accomplish. One of the major roles of a project manager is to create a plan that has specific points or milestones along the way to measure progress keep the project moving along in an efficient manner.

Slicing up a project into phases allows the project to be chunked out and managed more effectively and allows the entire team to focus on the tasks and activities needed to complete each phase with the overall project goals in mind.

When defining the project, the PM needs to envision the overall goals and objectives and then parse out the plan to meet those goals. This needs to be done in a manner that can help the team see the project phases in a logical order so they can realize the same vision when the project is underway.

We simply ask the question: How do you Eat an Elephant?

The answer: 1 Bite at a time...

Breaking out a project can help you focus on certain areas to be completed and organize the tasks and activities into workgroups. These workgroups or phases can be a more effective approach in managing the entire project.

Some of the standard project phases can include:

Kickoff
Discovery
Scope definition
Development
Unit Testing
QA Testing
User Testing
Migration to Production

In summary, the phases listed above represent standard project phases that can be used for different implementations. The list can be expanded or broken down even further, depending on the type of project and the type of project you are managing. Slicing up a project into phases is a sound approach that keeps the overall project running smoothly.

Complex Implementations should be broken down into several Phases of Project to make it easier for the team to focus on specific tasks and activities without feeling overwhelmed.

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