Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.

There are several approaches that can be taken to managing project activities including agile, interactive, incremental, and phased approaches.

Regardless of the approach employed, careful consideration needs to be given to clarify surrounding project objectives, goals, and importantly, the roles and responsibilities of all participants and stakeholders.

The traditional approach

A traditional phased approach identifies a sequence of steps to be completed. In the "traditional approach", we can distinguish 5 components of a project (4 stages plus control) in the development of a project:

• Typical development phases of a projectProject initiation stage;
• Project planning or design stage;
• Project execution or production stage;
• Project monitoring and controlling systems;
• Project completion stage.