The Project Life Cycle: Selection

One of the ways to study how projects are managed is by reviewing the different stages along the project life cycle. In this note we explore the first of these stages, the selection of projects. Project selection is usually not considered part of the traditional project management body of knowledge, as we usually assume that the job of managing a project starts when the project has already been selected. However, many problems encountered during the life of a project can be traced to a wrong selection of which projects to do and which to reject. Issues about the alignment of the projects with the intended strategy or, even more often, the selection of too many projects create situations that are impossible to resolve later on.