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Completing Project Phases
The key to successfully using this methodology is to complete each phase before you begin the next one. Further, you should always ensure that you not only complete each phase before moving to the next, but that you do so in the order presented in this chapter. To understand the consequences of ignoring these recommendations, consider the following analogy.
Imagine that you are building a new house and you have found the perfect site, and have hired an architect to design your new home. After a short while, you get impatient and take the plans (which are incomplete) to your contractor. The contractor recommends that you wait for the architect to complete the plans, but you want to get started. Responding to your desire to proceed, the contractor pours the foundation and begins framing the house. Then, the architect tells you that he has identified building code issues that necessitate changing the first draft of the plans. Because you didn't allow the architect to complete the planning phase before the contractor began implementing them, and because changes must be made to the original plans, the contractor has to tear out what he has done and must start over. This is an expensive mistake, which is time consuming and frustrating. You would have been better off waiting until the plans were completed.
Consolidation is much the same. If you use a complete methodology and don't stray from it, you'll be successful. If you don't, it's likely that you'll have problems.