Planning phase and executing phase are by far the most important phases in product lifecycle management.

During the planning phase it is imperative to get all stakeholders involved in developing a timeline, budget, resource allocation, and solidified sequence of steps to make the project successful. Ideally one would want the planning phase to be set in stone. The reason why the planning phase is so crucial is because many times during a project one hits a roadblock that usually effects a timeline or budget. In industry, timelines, budgets, and compliance are the three most important deliverables of a project. This hindrance can be attributed essentially to bad planning or failure to understand what really needs to be done. Also, if a plan to implement a project is truly good, there is leeway to go back and change some steps along the way. This usually isn’t the case, and instead you have to try to power through whatever obstacle is preventing the project from being implemented. With that being said, I have never worked on a project where the planning wasn’t restructured at some point due to some issue.

Second, I would argue the executing phase is just as important. If at some point during the lifecycle that a project hits a roadblock or delay it is usually in the execution phase. This phase is crucial because poor execution leads to wasted resources and time. This is because some projects that are poorly executed lead to deviations and non-conformances and that in turn usually leads to revising a protocol or plan. I have found that during the executing phase, this is the best opportunity to learn because you realize what works and what doesn’t. This ends up being a good take away because for future projects you will have experience in understanding and anticipating what does and doesn’t work.

I would argue that the closing phase is the least important phase because the project is nearing the tail end and the closing phase usually requires wrapping up loose ends such as getting signature approvals and closing out some outstanding documents.