Template
Techniques of management have become so sufficiently explicit that widespread recognition is accorded to the need to organize projects into such phases as: conception, planning, organization, implementation, and evaluation. Management teams (and others) alternate through such phases as well as through a succession of projects organized in that way.
Metaphor
In addition to groups, societies can be seen as operating in terms of such phases.
[Features]Recognition of the different skills (even personality types) required at each stage. Recognition of the importance of ensuring that the different phases mesh together effectively.
[Contrast]Although project phasing is a reality where organizations can be managed under appropriate supervision, such phasing is less meaningful in the case of societies as a whole. Even as a metaphor it is much less meaningful when the society is not under some monolithic pattern of control.
[Keys]Atlas of Managing Thinking by E de Bono which identifies some 200 phases in the management process.