5 Phases of a Project
I view a project as having roughly 5 phases. As engineers advance in their career, they start to become aware of and add value to more phases.
Executing
The most obvious phase of a project is “executing.” In this phase, engineers complete tasks and move project along. The most important thing I do in this phase is to have weekly “demos,” For a deep dive into execution, check out these rituals for mitigating risk during project execution
ideally to the first stakeholder to use the project. These demos are frequent reminders of the goal of the project and encourage engineers to think about the business value of every feature provided.
| ? | ? | Executing | ? | ? |
Planning
Senior engineers understand that before execution comes “planning,” where different solutions are evaluated and the winning solution is carefully planned out. In more structured organizations, you might see a “Technical Design Document” written. My favorite thing to do in this phase is to set a great goal that includes the use the project to achieve a business goal.
| ? | Planning | Execution | ? | ? |
Consensus Building
The most senior engineers understand that there is a very long phase that comes before design: the phase of “consensus building.” In this phase, the leadership team examines all the problems facing the business and picks the most impactful one to work on. In more structured organizations, you might see a “Product Requirements Document” written at the end of this phase; however, my experience is that the bulk of the consensus building happens informally and has already been done before anything gets written down. There is some overlap between consensus building and chage management, see the first 90 days or the change equation
My favorite thing to do in this phase is to enthusiastically champion other people’s ideas when they would further my goalsThis act is the strongest way to strengthen relationships I know.
. When proposing my own ideas, my favorite phrase is to say “I have a CRAZY idea. This idea is probably impossible and lives purely in the land of fiction, but I want to get your take on it. Would it be a crazy idea to …”This formulation is similar to the no oriented question from the Black Swan Group.
| Consensus Building | Planning | Executing | ? | ? |
Delivering
Senior engineers also understand that after execution comes “delivering” where the project is actually put in the hands of customers. This phase involves final acceptance testing, experimentation, and/or recovery from initial incidents and is critical to a high quality delivery. My favorite thing to do in this phase is to create automation around it, to make it as easy as possibleSee Gene Kim’s The Pheonix Project
. I also frequently encourage engineers to provide “white-glove” support to the first adopter of the project to remind them how critical adoption is to the success of the project and so that they become intimately connected with the needs and expectations of the users.
| Consensus Building | Planning | Executing | Delivering | ? |
Integrating
The final phase of “integrating” comes after delivery and is unfortunately the most often overlooked. Great engineers understand that a project is successful only if becomes part of the process to deliver business value. A project cannot be used once and then discarded; it must have enduring value. There are several ways to encourage integrating the project with processes: celebrating the release of the project and doing marketing tours to evangelize and increase awareness of the project, documentation and training for users, integration with other systems, etcFor more on the adoption of technology, see Geoffery Moore’s Crossing the Chasm
. In addition, it is critical to maintain the perception of the project by rapidly fixing quality bugs. My favorite thing to do here is to ask key users present about the project at internal all-hands on my behalf.
| Consensus Building | Planning | Executing | Delivering | Integrating |