EPM is defined as Enterprise Project management, which handles the projects in phase gates.
Where each phase gate has review meetings and decisions makings. It is best to have six or less life-cycle phases in an EPM system. As the number of phases increase time for preparing each phase will increase, this leads to delay in project completion.
If we have more life cycle phases then it takes more time for project managers to prepare for the gate review meetings, which causes them to focus more on reviewing life-cycle phases than actually managing the project.The following are the six life-cycle phases to complete the project. As explaining these phases will give more idea of each phase.Phase 1: Requirements GatheringThis is the first stage of the project where we collect all the requirements for the project. In this phase project managers involve business people to get the needs of the customers.Phase 2 : AnalysisIn this phase business analysts will analyze the business requirements and work with technical leads to convert business requirements to technical requirements.Phase 3 : DesignIn this phase we will design how we are going to develop the requirements and how many resources are needed and approximate project deadlines. We will create the design documents specifying the project flow and uml diagrams.
Phase 4 : Development/ImplementationThis is the actual phase where the developers are involved in developing the actual project which involves creating user interfaces, connecting to databases and writing various kind of services.Phase 5 : Deployment/TestingIn this phase we will be deploying our project into the servers and quality analysts will test the project to check whether it meets the customer requirements or not.Phase 6 : Go Live/Launch/MaintenanceOnce after everything is tested and project is ready we will launch it and public users can access the application.
Also in this phase there would be a production team to handle the defects/issues that public users are facing.So one should consider all the factors before deciding the number of life-cycle phases. References:http://www.meritsolutions.com/business-insights/6-phases-of-project-life-span/
