What is a project?

People have been undertaking projects for millennia, as humanity realised the benefits of working as an organised community rather than as individuals.

Throughout human history there have been many examples of projects such as:

projects made by our prehistoric ancestors including the design and building of Stonehenge in the United Kingdom
the construction of structures such as the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Wall of China
the Apollo Project to send people to land on the moon.

The term project is frequently used in everyday conversations, describing what people would like to do at the weekend or in the next five years. You are describing a project when these conversations identify clear goals with constraints of time and budget.

Characteristics of a project

A project has specific characteristics that distinguish it from ongoing work or business operations.

Projects are temporaryand unique in nature; they are not an everyday business process. They have definitive start and end dates and can last days, weeks, months or years. This characteristic is very important because you dedicate a large part of the project effort to ensuring that the project is completed at the proposed time. You develop schedules to show when tasks should begin and end. Similarly, projects usually have a specific budget allocated to them.

Projects exist to deliver a product or service that does not already exist, so each project is unique. Uniqueness is another key characteristic that distinguishes a project from operations work.

Operations work is routine and follows a continuous process. It often involves repetitive activities to produce the same results which do not have an end date.

You complete a project when you accomplish its goals and objectives. To accomplish these goals, you need to organise the activities and resources and make appropriate decisions. Sometimes projects end when you determine that the goals and objectives are not achievable or when the product or service is no longer needed and the project is cancelled.

How do you define a project?

You will consider two definitions:

According to Professor Turner, an academic in the field of project management:

"A project is an endeavor in which human, (or machine), material and financial resources are organized in a novel way, to undertake unique scope of work, of given specification, within constraints of cost and time, so as to deliver beneficial change defined by quantitative and qualitative objectives." - (Turner 2009, p. 2).

The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) 5 edition says that:

“A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.” - (Project Management Institute 2013, p. 553).

These definitions are important when exploring project management. You will explore these definitions in more detail later in this lesson.

Please refer to the glossary to check any terminology you are unfamiliar with: Glossary of Project Management Terms

Coming up...

In the following video, you will be introduced to the difference between projects and operations and you will explore some features of projects.