What Makes a Project

Definition

A project is a temporary undertaking to produce a unique result. Both words matter. Temporary means it has a defined start and end, not that it is short. Unique means the output differs from what has been produced before, which is why projects carry uncertainty that routine work does not.

Projects versus operations

Projects	Operations
Temporary, with a defined end	Ongoing and repetitive
Produce something new	Sustain and produce continuously
Team assembled and disbanded	Stable teams and roles
Higher uncertainty	Known processes
Progressive elaboration	Established standards

Most organisations do both, and the tension between them is a recurring source of difficulty: project work competes for people whose primary responsibility is operational, and operations almost always wins when there is a conflict unless governance says otherwise.

Related terms

• Programme — a group of related projects managed together to achieve benefits that could not be obtained by managing them separately.
• Portfolio — the collection of projects and programmes an organisation runs, selected and prioritised against strategy and available resource.
• Product — an ongoing thing that is developed and improved continuously rather than delivered once. The project-versus-product distinction matters increasingly, because much software and service work is better managed as a product than as a series of projects.

The constraints

Projects are conventionally described as balancing scope, time and cost, with quality either as a fourth dimension or as the consequence of the other three. Change one and at least one other must move: adding scope without adding time or cost means quality falls, whatever anyone claims.

A more complete list includes risk, resources and benefits. The essential point stands: these are connected, and a project manager's job includes making that connection visible to people who would prefer it were not.

What success means

Delivering on time and budget is necessary and not sufficient. A project that delivered exactly what was specified, on schedule, and produced no benefit has failed. Conversely, projects that overran have sometimes been transformative successes.

Useful success criteria cover delivery — time, cost, scope, quality — and outcome: were the intended benefits realised, are stakeholders satisfied, and does the result get used. Defining both at the outset, and agreeing who judges them, avoids the common situation where a project is declared a success and a failure simultaneously by different people.