Defining projects

Projects are fantastically diverse.

Projects include everything from the posters and dioramas you made at school to the big trip you recently went on and the dream home you one day hope to build.

Projects are found in every industry.

Projects span agriculture, construction, information technology, sports and events, government, aid work, aerospace and more.

They can also be delivered by individuals acting alone or in business, government, not-for-profit, and voluntary enterprises.

What each project has in common is a start and a finish.

This simple observation has some profound implications for the way projects are delivered.

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What do projects produce?

Outputs

For a project to successfully finish, it needs to produce an output.

That output can be a product, service, or result.

However, as we will see, the production of this tangible output is not necessarily the end of your project, nor even the purpose of the project.

How people ultimately use and benefit from this output (its outcomes) is far more important than the project itself.

And because no two projects ever start and finish at exactly the same time, in the same place, with the same people, and under the same conditions, every project is fundamentally unique. 

The differences are sometimes small but often significant.

Even repeating a simple project you have completed before will throw up a different result (either in terms of process or outcomes) because – if nothing else – presumably, you have learned from experience and are doing something differently.

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So what?

Business schools have traditionally taught management in the context of continuous operating cycles.

And whereas many of the lessons of general management do indeed apply to projects, our project-defined start and end date means that the effort we apply to day-to-day operations – or business as usual, as it is sometimes called – is not always a perfect fit for projects.

In fact, some general management knowledge doesn’t transfer well at all and can actually harm our projects.

So what are some of the other differences between projects and business as usual?

We will look at that in the next topic.