Chapter 7
The Project Birth and Death Process
With over 40 years of project management experience I can't help but conclude that despite the fact that projects are supposed to be finite efforts, there are some projects that will never die. After a while they take on a life of their own even though no one remembers why the project is being done. It has become institutional. With the exception of those projects, all projects follow a cycle of birth, maturation, and death just like any biological process or product life cycle. Up to the time of their birth (a.k.a. approval), projects are in a planning phase when the decision to undertake the project is made. Throughout their maturation phase (a.k.a. execution), projects are subject to change due mostly to random events whose likelihood was hopefully anticipated and planned but whose occurrence cannot be predicted. For all complex projects that maturation process includes the discovery, learning, and integration of functions and features into the solution. At some point in time the solution is deemed complete for the time and cost invested. The end of the project signals its death when the deliverables are produced and the project is completed successfully or acceptable deliverables are not produced and the project fails. Project success is measured by the deliverables having produced acceptable business value.
This is all well and good but the realities are often quite different. Are there active projects in your organization that ...
