project-management

The starting point for accepting project management is understanding the word project. A project is work that is impermanent and that creates a exclusive product or service. Temporary work has a beginning and an end. When the work is finished the team disbands or moves on to new projects. A project also has a well-defined scope of work and a budget. Joseph Juran, the quality guru, said that, “a project is a problem scheduled for a solution.”

We can help in knowing what projects are by also stating what they are not. Projects are temporary and unique; ongoing operations are neither. For example:

·         Developing weather forecasting software is a project; using that software to forecast the weather week after week is an operation.

·         Installing robots to paint automobiles at an assembly plant is a project; painting these cars is an operation.

The definition of a project gives us clues as to why projects can be so troublesome—if we get only one chance to do it right the chances for success would seem to be slim. And as challenging as it can be to manage a single project, the problem is greatly magnified when a firm has dozens or even hundreds of projects. Each project has its own risks, stakeholders, communication channels, and resource requirements.