Introduction to IT Project Management

3 Project Processes, Phases, and Life Cycles

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

•  Understand what the appropriate processes are for an IT project.

•  Be able to define the project phases for an IT project.

•  Discuss different types of project life cycles.

When you are first given a project, it can seem a little overwhelming. There’s an old saying in project management: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” In project management, we divide the project into phases and concentrate on managing each phase. Each phase is composed of a set of processes that guide us in starting the phase, planning it out, monitoring and managing it, and closing it out to move onto the next phase. The full set of all the phases on the project ...