A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully
plan
A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with details of timing and resources, used to achieve an objective to do something. It is commonly understood as a temporal set of intended actions through which one expects to achieve a goal. ...
ned to achieve a particular goal.
An alternative view sees a project
managerially as a sequence of events: a "set of interrelated tasks to be executed over a fixed period and within certain cost and other limitations".
A project may be a temporary (rather than a permanent)
social system (
work system), possibly staffed by
team
A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal.
As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to inf ...
s (within or across
organization
An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose.
The word is derived f ...
s) to accomplish particular
tasks under
time constraints.
A project may form a part of wider
programme management
or function as an ''ad hoc'' system.
Note that
open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. ...
"projects" or artists' musical "projects" (for example) may lack defined team-membership, precise planning and/or time-limited durations.
Overview
The word ''project'' comes from the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
word ''projectum'' from the Latin verb ''proicere'', "before an action," which in turn comes from ''pro-'', which denotes precedence, something that comes before something else in time (paralleling the
Greek πρό) and ''iacere'', "to do". The word "project" thus originally meant "before an action".
When the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
initially adopted the word, it referred to a plan of something, not to the act of actually carrying this plan out. Something performed in accordance with a project became known as an "
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
". Every project has certain phases of development.
Based on the Project Management Institute, a project can be defined as a "temporary endeavor" aimed to drive changes in teams, organizations, or societies. The output of a project is normally a unique product, service, or result.
Cancellation
Project cancellation is the termination of a
project prior to its completion and generally includes the cessation of access to
funding and other project resources. Project cancellation may result from
cost overruns
A cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, involves unexpected incurred costs. When these costs are in excess of budgeted amounts due to a value engineering underestimation of the actual cost during budgeting, they are known ...
,
schedule
A schedule or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things are ...
overruns, changes in
budget
A budget is a calculation play, usually but not always financial, for a defined period, often one year or a month. A budget may include anticipated sales volumes and revenues, resource quantities including time, costs and expenses, environme ...
, change or
obviation of the
goal of the project,
political
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studi ...
factors, or any combination of those and other factors.
Contract
A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to tr ...
s often stipulate the time and the manner in which a project may be cancelled.
Contracted projects typically have a specified end date, when the contract may or may not be renewed; nonrenewal often has the same effect as cancellation but carries different legal ramifications.
Formal definition in the project-management realm
A project consists of a concrete and organized effort motivated by a perceived opportunity when facing a problem, a need, a desire or a source of discomfort (e.g., lack of proper ventilation in a building). It seeks the realization of a unique and innovative deliverable, such as a product, a service, a process, or in some cases, a scientific research. Each project has a beginning and an end,
and as such is considered a closed dynamic system. It is developed along the 4 Ps of project management: Plan, Processes, People, and Power (e.g., line of authority). It is bound by the triple constraints that are calendar, costs and norms of quality,
each of which can be determined and measured objectively along the project lifecycle. Some projects produce some level of formal documentation, the deliverable(s), and some impacts, which can be positive and/or negative.
Specific uses
School and university
A project is an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned and researched about by students. At schools, educational institutes and universities, a project is a
research
Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...
assignment - given to a student - which generally requires a larger amount of effort and more independent work than that involved in a normal essay assignment. It requires students to undertake their fact-finding and analysis, either from library/internet research or from gathering data empirically. The written report that comes from the project is usually in the form of a
dissertation, which will contain sections on the project's inception, analysis, findings and conclusions.
Project management
In
project management
Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. T ...
, a project consists of a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique
product,
service or result.
Project Management Institute
The Project Management Institute (PMI, legally Project Management Institute, Inc.) is a U.S.-based not-for-profit professional organization for project management.
Overview
PMI serves more than five million professionals including over 680,0 ...
. ''A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is a set of standard terminology and guidelines (a body of knowledge) for project management. The body of knowledge evolves over time and is presented in ''A Guide to the Project Management Body of ...
'' (PMBOK Guide), Third Edition. Another definition is a
management
Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.
Management includes the activitie ...
environment that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more
business products according to a specified
business case A business case captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task. It is often presented in a well-structured written document, but may also come in the form of a short verbal agreement or presentation. The logic of the business case is that ...
. Projects can also be seen as temporary organizations.
Project
objectives define target status at the end of the project, reaching of which is considered necessary for the achievement of planned benefits. They can be formulated as
SMART criteria:
[Carr, David]
Make Sure Your Project Goals are SMART
PM Hut. Accessed 18. Oct 2009. Projects are often guided by a