Introduction

A common mistake in Project Management comes from the confusion between a project and the product's lifecycle. Project Management is the way to perform tasks in order to achieve goals within a Product's lifecycle framework. It means that a whole project may just concern the artistic design only or the marketing product definition.

Both Modern Project Management Methodologies and Product lifecycle frameworks have their roots in the early 17th Century. Of course, methods have existed which have allowed civilisations to prosper but the rationalisation level as we know has grown up during the industrial revolution. This revolution became possible due to a major evolution in the way of thinking in Europe.

This major change is called rationalism and is clearly explained by René Descartes (1596-1650) in France.

Below is the most famous excerpt of the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences:

I believed that the four following would prove perfectly sufficient for me, provided I took the firm and unwavering resolution never in a single instance to fail in observing them. The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgement than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt. The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution. The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence. And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.

The "scientific division of labour" also known as "Taylorism" is an achievement in this way of dividing tasks in order to make them simpler.

Ref: Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 1856-1915 The Principles of Scientific Management  

Product lifecycle framework segregates the different development tasks in clearly distinct processes. Project Management methodologies organize the job within these tasks.

The most important document in Project Management initialisation is called Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Generic Product lifecycle

Product lifecycles may vary with the different kind of products: Food and fresh products cannot be handled like electronic devices. This example shows clearly that lifecycle may be extremely different and depend on the product's nature.

An industrial goods generic lifecycle may look like below.

Source: Mil-Hdbk-881 Department Of Defense Handbook Work Breakdown Structure.
2 January 1998

Project Management Methodologies

 There are few methodologies very similar in their concept.

Let's cite:

• Project Management body of Knowledge  from the Project Management Institute ,now also known as IEEE Std 1490-2003 IEEE Guide Adoption of PMI Standard A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge http://www.pmi.org/info/default.asp

• Prince2 (PRoject IN Controlled Environment) from the Office of Goverment Commerce (OGC). Prince2 is public domain methodology. http://www.ogc.gov.uk/methods_prince_2__whatisit.asp

• INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook Version 3 (International Council on Systems Engineering) dedicated to huge projects or programmes. http://www.incose.org/

• ISO 15288:2002 - Systems engineering — System life cycle processes http://www.15288.com/

Actual Trend - Evolutions

 The actual trend is to have concurrent processes and concurrent projects running under Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) organisation. This way of organisizing tasks and  time to market constrainsts have made the process segregation being fuzzy.

 One way to save time is to capitalise the acquired knowledge. This knowledge may be acquired from experience but also from litterature like standards and knowledge sharing.

Conclusion

 This knowledge repository gives some demonstration on what can be used nearly for free in order to design top performance products. The main savings come from reusing already validated solutions. Whether these solutions were found internallly or provided by guidance documents like Military handbooks.