Project Life Cycle

Page 1

Definition and Types

A project life cycle is how one organizes while doing the work of the project.

Life Cycle and Development Approach:

A life cycle is a progression through a series of developmental stages. The project development life cycle reflects the performing organization's methodology for managing a project.

A project life cycle uses the following methodologies:

Plan-Driven Project Life Cycle: Plan-driven projects have predictive development (also referred to as traditional, predictive or waterfall) life cycles that require Scope, Schedule, and Cost to be determined in detail early in the life of the Project. For example Construction Projects.

Change-Driven Project Life Cycle: Change-driven projects use iterative and incremental (also referred to as agile or adaptive) development life cycles.

Incremental delivers a complete, usable portion of the product for each iteration;

in Iterative development, the complete concept is built in successive levels of detail to create the end result;

Adaptive development life cycles involve a fixed schedule as well as fixed costs. The scope is broadly defined with the understanding that it will be refined throughout the life of the product.

Hybrid Development Approach: A hybrid life cycle is a combination of a predictive and an adaptive development approach. A predictive approach is used to manage the requirements that are well defined and an adaptive life cycle is used when requirements are not very clear.