In contemporary business and science, a project is an individual or collaborative enterprise, possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned, usually by the project assigned team, to achieve a particular aim.
Contents
- Overview
- School and university
- Project management
- Civil and military construction and industry infrastructure
- Computer software
- Types
- Notable examples
- References
One can also define a project as a set of interrelated tasks to be executed over a fixed period and within certain cost and other limitations.
One can view projects as temporary (rather than permanent) social systems or as work systems that are constituted by teams within or across organizations to accomplish particular tasks under time constraints. An ongoing project is usually called (or evolves into) a program.
Overview
The word project comes from the Latin 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 actually originally meant "before an action".
When the English language 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". Every project has certain phases of development.
School and university
At schools, educational institutes and universities, a project is a research 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 own 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 an dissertation, which will contain sections on the project's inception, analysis, findings and conclusions...
Project management
In project management a project consists of a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. Another definition is: a management environment that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified business case.
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:
The evaluation (measurement) occurs at the project closure. However a continuous guard on the project progress should be kept by monitoring and evaluating. Note that SMART is best applied for incremental-type innovation projects. For radical-type projects it does not apply so well. Goals for such projects tend to be broad, qualitative, stretch/unrealistic and success will be driven.
Civil and military construction and industry infrastructure
In civil, military and industry (e.g. oil and gas) infrastructure, capital projects refer to activities to construct and install equipment, facilities and buildings. As these activities are temporary endeavors with clear start and end dates, the term "project" is applied. Because the results of these activities are typically long-standing infrastructure, with a life measured in years or decades, these projects are typically accounted for in financial accounting as capital expenditures, and thus they are termed "capital projects".
Computer software
In computer software a project can consist of programs, configuration definitions and related data. For example, in Microsoft Visual Studio a "solution" consists of projects and other definitions.
Types
Some analyses of project-oriented activity distinguish - using military-style terminology - between grandiose strategic projects and more trivial or component operational projects: tactical projects. Courses in topics such as "Strategic Project Management" foster the concept of the strategic project.