Project management is what turns ideas into finished products. It also provides a way of analyzing your process and finding out what works and what doesn’t. SMART Project Management is broken down into 10 steps spread out over 5 phases.
Substantiation Phase
The substantiation phase involves investigating the central concepts of the idea and develops a recommended course of action. This involves assessing costs, potential risks, and potential benefits.
Step 1: Determine the project concept. Fully define your idea.
Step 2: Develop a business case for the project.
Step 3: Draft a project proposal.
Meditation Phase
The meditation phase is a time to review the project and flesh out the details. This is when the individual steps are determined as well as the broadest strokes of strategy.
Step 4: Draw out the project plan. Include milestones, or high-level projects. The high-level plan should also include major risks and a rough timeline. In a separate plan, set out team efforts, or mid-level projects. This should set out budgets and resource allocation for each team. It should also set out timelines for each team. The low-level plan should describe individual tasks, or low-level projects.
Activation Phase
The activation phase lets your team know that it is time to begin the project. This is phase during which all team members formally assume their responsibilities.
Step 5: Create and disseminate an opening report, which presents an overview of the project and introduces the team.
Regulation Phase
The regulation phase involves periodically assessing the status of the project and making changes as necessary.
Step 6: Put together a status report to update the stakeholders.
Step 7: Assess the project in terms of what revisions are necessary. If needed, create a revision summary as a reference.
Step 8: If the assessment determines that there is a need for a significant change to the scope or budget of the project, create an adjustment proposal and submit it.
Termination Phase
The termination phase is the wrap-up phase.
Step 9: Assess the project as a whole. Create a project summary, which includes a summary of results and a baseline comparison.
Step 10: Create a trigger summary, which documents out-of-scope events. Use it to generate new projects or ideas.
