The OTR GroupPlenty of organisations call everything a project: the quarterly report, the office move, the new system, the monthly newsletter. Sometimes that is harmless. Sometimes it means the wrong disciplines are applied to the wrong work. This Q&A uses the Association for Project Management (APM) definition to help you decide what really counts as a project, and what does not.
1. How does APM define project management?
APM describes project management as "the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge and experience to achieve specific project objectives." The key word is specific. A project exists to achieve something defined, rather than to keep a service running.
2. What makes a project different from everyday work?
APM says projects have "final deliverables that are constrained to a finite timescale and budget." That finite timespan is what distinguishes a project from ongoing management. If the work has no planned end and simply continues month after month, it is probably operations, not a project.
3. Can ongoing work still use project techniques?
Yes. Many teams borrow planning and tracking habits from projects for routine work. The distinction matters mainly for governance. A project needs a defined outcome, a budget and a date by which it will be finished or stopped. Routine operations usually need performance measures instead.
4. When does work need formal project management?
APM says the projects that need formal management are those that "require the management of risks." Where nothing could go wrong, a to-do list will do. Where outcomes, money or reputations are at stake, structure earns its keep.
5. What does APM list as a core part of the job?
Among the core components APM lists is "managing the risks, issues and changes on the project." A useful way to separate them: a risk is something that might happen, an issue is something that has already happened, and a change is a request to alter what was agreed. Keeping the three apart helps a team respond to each in the right way.
6. Where does a project start and finish?
APM refers to a project life cycle that runs from concept through to handover. The practical lesson is that a project is not finished when the last task is ticked. It is finished when the deliverable has been handed to the people who will use it, and the team has stopped.
A quick test you can run today
- Is there a specific outcome we can describe in a sentence?
- Does it have a planned start and end, or does it simply continue?
- Is there a budget that was set before the work began?
- Could risks, issues or changes affect the result?
- Who will receive the final deliverable?
If most answers are yes, you are probably looking at a project and it deserves a plan, an owner and a finish line. If most answers are no, you may be managing a service, which is no less important but calls for different habits.
Source: Association for Project Management, "What is project management?" (apm.org.uk). The explanations of risk, issue and change in question 5 are general good practice, not APM quotations.