ABSTRACT
It has been common in the past to talk about the project life-cycle, but we think that is a misnomer. A life-cycle implies that you return to the beginning. An insect goes through a life-cycle: an adult lays an egg; the egg hatches into a larva; the larva turns into a pupa; the pupa hatches into an adult and the adult lays an egg. That is a cycle; you return to the beginning. But that does not happen on projects: one project, and the investment it creates, goes through its life, from its germination to its eventual death, (decommissioning), but it does not necessarily result in a new project. Other projects happen around it, but it is not necessarily the case that the end of one project germinates the beginning of another. Projects, and the investments they create, have a life, but not a cycle – they don’t return to the beginning. As a project goes through its life, it follows a number of steps, and so follows a process, and so it is the concept of process we want to emphasize in this chapter.
