PROJECT MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
CONCEPTS

OVERVIEW AND GOALS

This chapter provides a general overview of the role projects have played in
the world and how projects in history, as well as projects today, share fundamental
elements. It defines the project life cycle, the product life cycle,
and the process of project design that integrates and aligns the two into one
or more projects.
The triple constraint is introduced as important in defining and managing
projects. How project management evolved helps to explain how it is
applied in different settings today, and why those differences developed.
And while the standard life cycle for projects applies “as is” uniformly
across industries, it requires developing different levels and types of detail
on projects. Tailoring general project management approaches is proposed
based on the types of projects being managed.
WHAT IS A PROJECT?
In Chapter 1 we distinguished projects, which are temporary and unique,
from operations, which are ongoing and repetitive.1 Projects have little, if
any, precedent for what they are creating, the project work is new, and work-

ers are unfamiliar with expectations. On the other hand, operations are
repetitive, routine business activities. They are familiar and documented.
They have benefited by improvements over time, and worker expectations
are written into job descriptions.
Thousands of project management professionals have agreed that a
project has a clear beginning and a clear end, as well as a resulting product
or service that is different in some significant way from those created
before. The unique product or service in a project management setting is
often called a deliverable, a generic term that allows discussion about the
result without getting specific about its characteristics. The project’s deliverable
may be the ultimate product or service, or it may be a clearer definition
needed for the next consecutive project, such as a design or a plan. In
some cases it may be just one part of the final deliverable, consisting of outputs
of multiple projects.2
The reason the distinction is important that projects have “a clear
beginning, a clear end, and a unique product or service” is that the “rules”
for managing projects are different than the “rules” for managing operations.
The roles of the people in relation to the project are different as well.
To better understand the distinction, we can compare it with how the rules
and roles differ in sports.