Project Management 101.1 — What is a project?

The Project Management Institute defines a project as a “temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service ,or result.

A project is a temporary initiative that is agreed, planned , and executed to achieve a specific goal.

A project is defined using a set of constraints.

First, we have time. This refers to a project being a temporary initiative. It is distinct from normal business operations in that it has a predetermined start and end date.

Operations are routine work. Day to day activities that are not very different from one day to another are operations. There is no end date assigned to sales and marketing activities or finance activities, these are operations.

On the other hand, projects have strict expiry dates. There is a specific goal you wish to achieve with the project within a particular period of time. This is the output of the project.

The output along with the work done to create it is called the Project Scope.

The scope of each project is unique. There can be project outputs that are similar: building exact same web application but with different branding is an example.

Even though the application is same and much of the code base can be reused, the very fact that the branding and domain are different is enough to change the project’s scope.

The engineers and designers will need to adapt the application according to the new branding and hence this changes the way this new project work is done.

But if the work and output are the same, this will not be a separate project. The scope will not be unique and it will just be a regular business process.

The third key attribute is cost, which is the resources specifically dedicated to accomplishing the goal in mind.

These three attributes form the project management triple constraint.

Time, scope ,and cost are dependent on each other. After determining them at the start, if one of them changes, it will trigger a change in one or both of the others.

It is worth noting that projects are complex initiatives. Going to a new restaurant for dinner is also a temporary activity with a specific goal and limited budget, but is not a project. A project also needs to benefit the business through working in conjunction with a business strategy.