Penetration Testing Information Gathering for Web Server Fingerprinting

Penetration has a standard life cycle, which includes intelligence gathering or reconnaissance, scanning, threat modeling & vulnerability identification, exploitation, Post Exploitation, clean up, and reporting.

Different projects may rearrange the stages in different ways, but whichever they rearrange, you have to know that there are standard things to be done and in certain ways. For example, you should not do exploitation without gathering certain intelligence about the target. It will not make sense to start exploitation without knowing about the target and the operating environment of the target.
So, that’s why the standard life cycle will guide you on the steps to take and how you might arrange the life cycle to meet your project objective.