1. A method implemented and residing in a non-transitory machine-readable medium for execution on a machine, comprising: acquiring, by the machine, a project definition for a project within a first stage of a lifecycle, each stage of the lifecycle handled by a different processing environment; recognizing a sub project definition within the project definition that is hidden from view and from access within the project definition; identifying a masked code within the project definition for the sub project definition; using the masked code to acquire the sub project definition; and dynamically instantiating and configuring, by the machine, first stage resources of the project that are associated with the first stage when requested within the first stage based on the project definition and the sub project definition.