These phases can act as an informal checklist and help guide you through the process, at least in a generic way, for any project you do.
Initiation or Inception
Perform initial studies
Make stakeholders aware of the project. It is important to involve stakeholders across traditional vertical silos in your organization in order to be successful. For example, involve the network and infrastructure people early on so they are not learning of your new system three days before you deploy.
Obtain approval for the project from your customers, clients, and anyone else who has the power to give the "ok to go" word.
Form a project team with the appropriate involvement of both business and technical people.
Analysis and Requirements Definition
Analyze the business problem needing to be solved from a purely business perspective.
Initiate project management tasks.
Obtain requirements from the customer from a business perspective.
Document requirements.
Perform risk analyses.
Determine if you are going to develop or purchase a third party solution based on cost benefit analyses.
Issue Request for Proposals and evaluate vendors if using a third party solution.
Determine resource requirements.
Determine if you need consulting services and, if so, evaluate and select a vendor.
Develop project plan.
Obtain approval on requirements and project plan.
Design
Create design documents as you integrate the technology perspective to the business problem to create a custom solution.
Purchase and acquire software package if you are purchasing a third party solution.
Design any conversion or interface processes.
Develop test plans and procedures for quality assurance.
Develop implementation and training plans.
Prepare for construction phase.
Review and update project and quality assurance plans.
Obtain client approval on design and project plans.
Construction
Install and test software.
Install and test any purchased packages.
Develop and code the software.
Develop and code interfaces and any customizations to third party packages.
Develop interfaces to other systems.
Develop technical documentation.
Develop end-user documentation and training materials.
Perform unit testing.
Perform integration testing.
Perform system testing.
Conduct user training.
Installation or Deployment
Install the actual system.
Conduct system acceptance testing.
Obtain authorization and approval on the production system.
Rollout the new system.
Closeout the project.
Closeout quality assurance plans.
Maintenance
Monitor ongoing operations.
Perform ongoing system administration tasks.
Fix bugs.
Create enhancements.
Release new versions by following a development, test, and production release cycle.
Remove from Service
Move a system out of production into obsolescence.
Although this is not exactly rocket science, it is helpful to keep at least a simplistic view of this life cycle in mind as you tackle new projects. Obviously, the larger and more complex a project, the greater the need for a more formalized and structured process. After all, if you have a large project team with many stakeholders and a complex business problem to solve with multiple technologies, you need structure. Otherwise, it would be like having the entire staff of the TV food networks in the same kitchen working free form, not a recipe for success.
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