Why is the concept of "phase" is important in project management?

There are many phases, including planning, design, and manufacturing phases.
in fact, this "phase" is a very important idea in project management.

depending on the "phase" setting, the results will vary greatly whether the project succeeds or fails. have you somehow set up a "phase"?
so, let's understand the "phase" again, set it up appropriately, and make the project a
success!

what is the "phase" in project management?

What is a "phase" in a project?

"Phase" means "stage" or "phase" literally translated.

Next, the project is the formulation and implementation of a plan to achieve the objective. In the IT industry, it refers to "planning and executing products and services within a defined period of time".

For this reason, the "phase" of a project is a unit separated by the content of work, duration, and scale when planning and carrying out manufacturing.

why do projects need "phases"?

so why do you need to divide a "project" into multiple "phases"?

projects that end up in a short period of time can be run and completed at once instead of phased out. however, in software development, there are often many medium- to long-term development projects. large, long projects result in a huge amount of work to be done, which clutters project management.

so you can steadily reach your goal by dividing it into phases and managing them for each phase. in the phase, we set and manage each clear goal goal (achievement criteria and deliverables).

in addition, the work to be done in the "phase" is called a "task", and it is also possible to prevent rework by removing, executing, and managing without omissions.

if you represent "project", "phase" and "task" as an image, it will be as follows.

1

In this way, the decomposition of the entire project to the task level and representing it in a tree structure is called the WBS (Work Breakdown Structure).
This gives you a bird's-eye view of the entire project.

phase gate, an important concept in project management

At the beginning, I mentioned that phase division affects the success or failure of the project, but this is the key point.

• When migrating phases, you may have migration criteria in place. This is called a phase gate. "Phase gate" is the basis for confirming the completion of the Phase.
• If you don't meet the prescribed criteria for that task, you won't be able to proceed to the next "phase."
• In addition, since "phase gate" is a key point in proceeding with the project, it is also a time to evaluate the work up to date and consider changing or canceling the project.

Now, with this "phase gate", there are many companies in the manufacturing industry that have established a process to prevent rework by conducting reviews and migration decision meetings fairly tightly.

On the other hand, in the IT industry, despite the same manufacturing, surprisingly very few companies have set this "phase gate" correctly and strictly review and judge.

As a result, we have heard many voices such as "rework occurred" and "unexpected events occurred and delays".

The principle of a project is that the later processes will be more difficult to change and modify.

In particular, in the manufacturing industry, even in the increments of 0.1 yen, cost reduction is required, so there is a tendency to dislike changes in the post-process extremely. Shouldn't it be better to learn from the IT industry around here?

IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT, PHASE GATES ARE ALSO CENTRALLY MANAGED WITH WBS!

Now, you can understand the importance of "phase gate" in project management. From now on, it is recommended to manage and operate "Phase Gate" together with "WBS".
However, we have heard many voices that this "phase gate" is defined as a company standard, but it is not thoroughly implemented throughout the
company.
As we checked, there were many cases where the WBS Gantt chart and phase gate were managed separately.
Isn't centralized management the quickest way to spread standardization?

PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS: PHASE GATE MANAGEMENT ENABLED BY PM

Our recommended integrated project management tool SI Object Browser PM (PM) enables centralized management of WBS and phase gates with a function called milestones.
You can set phase gate milestones on the Gantt chart for each
project.

2

you can set up two types of phase gates: review assessment and quality assessment.
"review evaluation" is mainly used for review and point management of documents such as requirement definition documents and design
documents. we will record the review results, make sure to make a point in accordance with the phase gate, and eliminate missed definitions, misstatements, etc.

3

Another milestone, quality assessment, is an image of a checklist. it is used for checking and recording migration and shipping decisions.

4

Is there a check omission, and have you experienced complaints after delivery and do not know where the record of the check went?
PM can be centrally managed by linking to the project, preventing omissions and tracking the cause immediately in the unlikely event of an accident.

In addition, when monitoring projects across the world, such as PMO and quality assurance departments, you can check at a glance whether they have been implemented or not implemented through the milestone list.

5

• In this way, it is possible to standardize the phase gate of the company.
• Why don't you reduce project management man-hours and operate projects efficiently with the integrated project management tool PM?
• We can also aim to improve quality and profit.

If you are interested in PM, please contact us for a demo.