Describe the main phases of a project lifecycle.
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Initiation: business case, charter, stakeholders
- Planning: scope, schedule, budget, risks
- Execution: doing the work, managing the team
- Monitoring and control throughout
- Closing: handover, lessons learned
Model answer
A typical project goes through five phases. In initiation we define why the project exists, create the business case and charter, get a sponsor and identify the key stakeholders. In planning we break the scope into deliverables, estimate effort, build the schedule and budget, identify risks and agree how we will communicate. In execution the team does the work, and I coordinate people, vendors and dependencies. Monitoring and control runs alongside execution: we track progress against the plan, manage changes, risks and issues, and report status. Finally, in closing we hand over the deliverables, get formal acceptance, release resources and run a lessons learned session so the next project benefits. In agile projects these steps repeat in short cycles, but the same ideas still apply.
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