Subtitles of the Movie

In this section titled PMBOK Guide Overview, we will cover a live review of the PMBOK Guide, which will serve as a refresher and review of the project foundation and framework. Detailed information of this material is covered in the previous course of this series, PMBOK Part 1. In this movie, we will specifically review the project lifecycle. The project lifecycle literally refers to the life of a project. It defines the project from beginning to end connected by various phases. Think about the lifecycle as a high-level view of the project. Let's discuss in more detail what is meant by phases. Project phases are what projects are divided into in order to manage them more effectively and also more efficiently. It allows the project team to have greater control over the project's end result and overall success. Project phases typically define the technical work that's to be done, the project deliverables, who is involved within the project and also the monitoring and approval that takes place over the course of the project. As you can see within our diagram, the project phases naturally occur within the project lifecycle. A couple of other quick notes on project phases: there is a beginning, middle and ending phase. They occur sequentially. There is no set number of phases that must occur within a project since it varies by project complexity, industry and sometimes by company. A project may be divided into various types of phases depending on several factors such as the project itself and the industry. An example grouping of project phases includes requirements, design, development, testing and implementation or a more generic groups, such as initiation, planning, executing and closing phase. A final note I'll make is that moving from one phase to the next is a formal process, just as beginning a phase is and also closing it out. They are not occurrences that take place without acknowledgement and obtaining approval. I'll briefly explain in more detail what occurs within a phase. Although each phase may be unique depending on the project, we tend to see some or all of the following groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and closing. These are a grouping of related processes that occur within each individual phase. Again, not all of these process groups occur within a given phase. In our diagram, you can see how we begin to define the project in greater detail as we move downward. For example, we begin by looking at the overall project through its lifecycle. We broke the lifecycle into manageable pieces through phases and then we continued by breaking down the phases through process groups. Each process group contains a set of processes. In the next movie I'll provide you with an overview of these process groups. And that wraps up the overview and review of the project lifecycle. As just mentioned, we'll just pick up with a discussion on the process groups, what they are and an overview of what they entail.