Project Management: Foundations to Practice · Foundations of Project Management
The Project Life Cycle
Every project moves through recognizable phases, but the specific model used to describe that movement has itself evolved substantially, most recently and significantly with PMBOK's 8th edition. This chapter traces that evolution and what it means in practice.
Historically, PMI organized project work into five process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing [1]. This model implies a broadly sequential flow, even though monitoring and controlling runs concurrently with executing throughout a project's life, and even though real projects frequently loop back to replanning when new information emerges.
Key Takeaways
- PMI's traditional model organized projects into five process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing.
- PMBOK 8th Edition (November 2025) reframes this around seven performance domains and five non-prescriptive Focus Areas instead of a rigid sequence.
- This reflects that modern projects, especially iterative or Agile ones, rarely move in a single straight line.
- The underlying plan-execute-check-adjust rhythm persists across frameworks, even as its formal packaging has changed.