Project Operations Fundamentals and Lifecycle
The operating model
A professional services organization runs on a connected lifecycle: opportunity → project contract → project plan → execution (time, expense, material) → billing → revenue recognition → close and analysis. Candidates must be able to name each stage, the record types that carry it (opportunity, quote, project contract, project, task, time entry, expense report, invoice, revenue journal), and what triggers movement between stages. Understand that the project contract is the pivot record: it links the sold scope and pricing to the delivery plan and to the accounting engine.
Lifecycle mechanics
Know the difference between a fixed-price, time-and-materials, and milestone-based engagement and how each drives billing and revenue behavior. Understand project status transitions (draft, active, closed, on hold) and what is blocked at each status - for example, time entry is typically rejected against a closed project. Understand that a project can be created directly, from a template, or from a won quote, and that the origin affects which fields populate automatically.
Traps
Questions love to test whether you know that closing a project does not automatically post revenue, that a template copies structure but not transactions, and that lifecycle stage names differ from document status names. Watch for distractors that confuse "project status" with "contract status" or claim that deleting a project deletes its posted transactions.
Rule of thumb
Trace any scenario forward and backward: every transaction must have a project, every project must have a contract or internal source, and every invoice must trace to approved transactions. If a step in that chain is missing, the answer is usually the step that restores the chain.