A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. What is Project in Project Management? Meaning and Definition. The planned set of reciprocal works should execute within a certain period and some costs and other limitations. Also learn, What is Corporate Entrepreneurship? Meaning and Definition. Like most organizational efforts, the major goal of a project is to satisfy a customer’s needs. Beyond this fundamental similarity, the characteristics of a project help differentiate it from other endeavors of the organization.
Now Project Management is explaining What is Project? Understand as well as Meaning and Definition.
What is a project in project management? Simply put, a project is a series of tasks that need to complete in order to reach a specific outcome. A project can also be defined as a set of inputs and outputs required to achieve a particular goal. Projects can range from simple to complex and can manage by one person or a hundred. Explain by www.wrike.com.
A project is defined as a “temporary endeavor with a beginning and an end and it must use to create a unique product, service or result”. Further, it progressively elaborates. What this definition of a project means is that projects are those activities that cannot go on indefinitely and must have a defined purpose.
Meaning and Definition of the Project:
The project is a great opportunity for organizations and individuals to achieve their business and non-business objectives more efficiently through implementing change. Projects help us make desired changes in an organized manner and with a reduced probability of failure.
A Project is a temporary, unique, and progressive attempt or endeavor made to produce some kind of a tangible or intangible result (a unique product, service, benefit, competitive advantage, etc.). It usually includes a series of interrelated tasks that planned for execution over a fixed period of time and within certain requirements and limitations such as cost, quality, performance, others.
The “project manager” is in charge of the planning and execution of a project. He makes sure that everything is following the client’s vision and quality standards. He will also hold accountable for the project’s success or failure.
People have been “managing projects” for centuries. They went from using traditional tools such as pen and paper to the use of advanced technologies. Currently, project managers employ the use of project management tools to speed up and ease the entire work process.
Features or Characteristics of a Project:
The major characteristics of a project are as follows:
- An established objective.
- A defined lifespan with a beginning and an end.
- Usually, the involvement of several departments and professionals.
- Typically, doing something that has never been done before.
- Specific time, cost, and performance requirements.
First:
Projects have a defined objective—whether it is constructing a 12-story apartment complex by January 1 or releasing version 2.0 of a specific software package as quickly as possible. This singular purpose is often lacking in daily organizational life in which workers perform repetitive operations each day.
Second:
Because there is a specified objective, projects have a defined endpoint, which is contrary to the ongoing duties and responsibilities of traditional jobs. In many cases, individuals move from one project to the next as opposed to staying in one job. After helping to install a security system, an IT engineer may assign to develop a database for a different client. Does this question better explain What is the Cost of Capital? Meaning and Definition.
Third:
Unlike much organizational work that segmented according to functional specialty; projects typically require the combined efforts of a variety of specialists. Instead of working in separate offices under separate managers, project participants, whether they be engineers, financial analysts, marketing professionals, or quality control specialists, work closely together under the guidance of a project manager to complete a project.
Fourth:
The fourth characteristic of a project is that it is non-routine and has some unique elements. This is not an either/or issue but a matter of degree. Obviously, accomplishing something that has never been done before, such as building a hybrid (electric/gas) automobile or landing two mechanical rovers on Mars, requires solving previously unsolved problems and breakthrough technology. On the other hand, even basic construction projects that involve established sets of routines and procedures require some degree of customization that makes them unique.
Finally:
Specific time, cost, and performance requirements bind projects. Projects are evaluated according to accomplishment, cost, and time spent. These triple constraints impose a higher degree of accountability than you typically find in most jobs. These three also highlight one of the primary functions of project management; which is balancing the trade-offs between time, cost, and performance while ultimately satisfying the customer. Business finance accounting Managing by simple accounting system of Bookkeeping, as well as understand What is Bookkeeping? Meaning and Definition.
What a Project is Not Projects should not confuse with everyday work.
A project is not routine, repetitive work! Ordinary daily work typically requires doing the same or similar work over and over, while a project is done only once; a new product or service exists when the project completed. Recognizing the difference is important because too often resources can use upon daily operations which may not contribute to longer-range organization strategies that require innovative new products.
Program versus Project In practice the terms project and program cause confusion. They often used synonymously. A program a group of relates projects designed to accomplish a common goal over an extended period of time. Each project within a program has a project manager. The major differences lie in scale and time span. Program management is the process of managing a group of ongoing, interdependent, related projects in a coordinated way to achieve strategic objectives.
For example:
A pharmaceutical organization could have a program for curing cancer. The cancer program includes and coordinates all cancer projects that continue over an extended time horizon. Coordinating all cancer projects under the oversight of a cancer team provides benefits not available from managing them individually. This cancer team also oversees the selection and prioritizing of cancer projects that included in their special “Cancer” portfolio. Although each project retains its own goals and scope, the project manager and team also motivated by the higher program goal. Program goals are closely related to broad strategic organizational goals.
What are the basic phases of a project and its purposes?
The periods of a project make up the project life cycle. It is advantageous for the project chiefs to partition the project into stages for control and the following purposes. Every achievement at each stage then explain and follow for culmination. The fundamental periods of a project are reliant on the sort of project that is complete. For example, a product project may have the necessity, plan, assemble, test, execution stages while a project to manufacture a metro or a structure may have various names for each stage.
Subsequently, the naming of the periods of a project relies upon the sort of expectations that looked for at each stage. With the end goal of definition, the stages might isolate into an underlying sanction, scope proclamation, plan, gauge, progress, acknowledgment, endorsement, and handover. This order as indicated by the PMBOK. In this way, the periods of a project firmly connected with that of the project cycle. The reason for each period of the project is a lot of expectations that settled upon before the project begins.
For example:
In a product project, the prerequisite stage needs to create the necessary records, the planning stage the plan report, and so forth. The construct stage in a project conveys the finished code while the test stage is about the finished testing for the expectations.
Each period of the project relates to a specific achievement and the arrangement of expectations; that each stage requires to convey then follow for consistency and conclusion. The Project Life Cycle comprises of the starting, executing, controlling, and shutting cycles of the structure as depicted in the PMBOK. Every one of these cycles is important to guarantee that the project remains on target and finish by the determinations.
