This workshop introduces a lifecycle approach to computational political science research, helping scholars integrate recent advances in large language models (LLMs) and machine learning into their full research pipeline. Rather than treating computational tools as isolated techniques, the session frames them as components of a coherent workflow progressing from corpus curation through to performance reporting. Drawing on real-world examples from ongoing research at the Connected_Politics Lab, the workshop grounds each stage in practical applications familiar to scholars of institutions and organisations. The session is designed for a mixed audience: those already working with text-as-data methods will find new perspectives on LLM integration and evaluation standards, while those newer to computational approaches will gain a structured mental model for incorporating these tools into their own research.