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What Is a Project?

August 27, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Definitions, Project Management Musings

What Is a Project?
By Lynda Bourne

The current definitions of a project have a common theme, but generally fail to differentiate projects from on-going operations. With governments world-wide starting to legislate about ‘projects’ we need to tighten up these definitions from within our profession before lawyers do the job for us!

There seems to be two elements of a project that clearly separate the practice and profession from operational work. These are:

  • Projects are about creating change. Turning a block of land into a building, developing a new business process, or writing a software program. At the end of the project there’s something significantly different in the world.
  • Projects are also temporary organizations. The key role of a project manager is to develop the temporary team, lead them in the work of the project and then dissipate the team at the end as the output from the project is transitioned to the client or operational users.

If these two factors are present, the endeavor is almost certainly a project. If one is present, it may be a project.

How do these ideas compare to the current definition of a project? The PMBOK® Guide has the following key elements in its definition:

  • It is a temporary endeavor. Whilst this is true of a project, all endeavors are temporary. Endeavor is synonymous with ‘work’ and all work is temporary. The work by the accounts department to process the end of month accounts in a business is temporary but highly unlikely to be a project.
  • To create a unique product, service or result. Again whilst this is true, virtually every product, service or result is ‘unique’. Every Ford motorcar rolling off a production line is unique; it has a unique chassis number, a unique engine number, and has been made at a different time to the cars before it and after it. The difference between a project and an operational production item is the project is intended to create a distinct change. Producing a routine set of monthly accounts or another car from a production line is business as usual – the operation’s management may be looking for incremental improvements in their process but not change. The result of a project is a change in the environment (eg, a new building) or a change in the way the organization works.

Other standards add additional factors to the PMBOK’s starting point such as the need for coordinated activities over time (dates), the use of resources and the presence of risk. None of these additional factors differentiate a project from operational work; all endeavors involve coordinating the activities of resources over time to achieve the intended outcome, and the outcome is always at risk.

The change needed to existing definitions of a project to actively differentiate projects from operational work is not great. The PMBOK definition could be amended from:

A temporary endeavor to create a unique product, service or result..

to:

An endeavor, undertaken by a temporary team to create a new or changed, product, service or result.

This definition may not be perfect but it’s a lot closer to differentiating projects from operational work.

Dr. Lynda Bourne DPM, PMP.

Lynda is the Managing Director of Stakeholder Management Pty Ltd. This business is focused on improving the capability of organisations to effectively manage their stakeholder relationships to the benefit of both the stakeholders and the organisation’s projects. She is also the Director of Training with Mosaic Project Services Pty Ltd, where she is responsible for the development and delivery of OPM3, PMP, CAPM, Stakeholder Management and other project management training.

Lynda is a recognised international author, seminar leader and speaker. She is a SeminarsWorld® presenter and an accredited OPM3 ProductSuite Assessor and Consultant who has led a number of commercial OPM3 ProductSuite assessments.

She graduated from RMIT University Melbourne as the first professional Doctor of Project Management in 2005. Her research on defining and managing stakeholder relationships has lead to the development of the Stakeholder Circle® tool set and the SRMM® maturity model. Lynda blogs regularly on the Mosaic Projects blog.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 and is filed under Project Management Definitions, Project Management Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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