Phases in the project

The definition of a project (a planned set of interrelated tasks to be executed over a fixed period and within certain cost and other limitations) remains the same regardless of the industry, and so do the phases.

As per the PMI standard, the typical project phases are:

• Initiation
• Planning
• Execution/implementation
• Controlling/testing
• Closing

Here, we will discuss the project phases from the dashboard point of view.

The initiation phase

The initiation phase is the beginning of the project. In this phase, the idea for the project is explored and elaborated with the business user (Customer). It is in this phase that the project team aligns customer requirements with the deliverables(Dashboards). So, the successful execution of this phase will be a key factor in the success of the project.

In this chapter, we will work on how to have a better alignment with the customer so as to create informative, useful, and customer-centric dashboards.

The planning phase

Once the requirement is set with customer in the initiation phase, we move to the effort, time, and budget estimation. The planning phase helps us achieve this; for example, a typical dashboard end-to-end project would require the following resource:

**the number of resources will vary depending on the project size. The Author has taken the numbers just for illustration.

• One of the major deliverables of this phase is design blueprint. The expected outcome of the blueprint is to have the following:
• Data mart design.
• Decisions on fact and dimension tables.
• Universe design/semantic layout.
• The complete dashboard design

The execution/implementation phase

In the implementation phase, we start the actual development work after completing the design in the planning phase based on the gathered business requirements. We will talk about the dashboard creation process in detail later in this chapter.

The control/testing phase

Once the Dashboard is created and implemented, it needs to be tested for end user acceptance. In the testing phase, the customer can accept or reject the dashboard. Acceptance will lead to project closure. If it is rejected with any defects, then we need to rework on the requirement.

The closing phase

Every project has its takeaways. Project management office (PMO) makes it mandatory (in most cases) that a project closure cannot happen until the documentation is complete. So, in the closing phase, the documentation related to best practices, lessons learned, and other factors affecting the project needs to be updated.