Like most things, projects have a lifespan that can be split up into phases. Project Phases allows you to define these phases, and give them characteristics.
Location: Project Manager, Phases
Overview
Phases of a project usually follow a timeline of varying sorts. The starting point of any phase development is in defining each of the phases themselves.
Phases are usually part of a set, all of which belong to the selected project. Given that, each has its own unique number, its hierarchical position within the project. Note that the hierarchical position does not define a phase’s position on the timeline – the timeline takes precedent
Phase names must be unique within a project. Over a variety of projects, you can have Phase names that are identical.
A brief but comprehensive description for the phase, particularly its purpose, is often helpful for future reference.
Most phases have an output of some type, else there wouldn’t be much reason for having them. Business Administrator’s project efforts are generally focused on marketing, so phases tend to fall along the lines of ‘Static’, ‘Letter’, ‘eMail’, ‘Telephone’ and ‘Labels only’, which are all very marketing related actions. ‘Static’ is the equivalent of ‘None’ where you would not want any output from the project.
Business Administrator also asks you to define the lifespan of the project phase, and to give it a colour. The colour is used when the phase is presented on a timeline. Ideally, each phase within a project would have a different colour.
The list at the top of the dialogue will show the existing phases within the selected project. You can move projects up and down the hierarchy, and even delete them.
When you create a new project, Business Administrator automatically creates two default phases, both of which can be renamed or deleted. They are ‘Initial Contact’ and ‘Write Off’. ‘Initial Contact’ is there so you can start loading contacts into the project straight away. ‘Write Off’ is special; it’s there so you can move redundant contacts to a holding phase. You could remove the contacts from the project, but you would have no record of which contacts were ever on that project. ‘Write Off’ allows you to make that record, and Business Administrator assumes they will never be used again. Note that if a contact is deleted from the system, it is also deleted from all projects and phases.
When you’ve answered all the questions, you can start planning the project from within this dialogue. Simply click ‘Project Planner’ from the Function Bar to get started.