In this video, Professor Lavagnon Ika, project management professor at the University of Ottawa, explains what a project is and what are its main characteristics.
You have plenty of projects out there, putting a man on the moon is a project, you know, putting a billionaire into space is a project, delivering the LRT in town here is a project. Delivering the hope (inaudible) is a project and doing COVID-19 rollout is also a project. Now the question is what is a project, anyway? So you have plenty of definitions of real-world projects out there, but there is one definition that stands apart, perhaps. That’s the definition that has been put forward by the U.S. based project management institute. According to the PMI, who is a well established and well-known over the world project management association, a project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product or service or even result.
So you have a number of definitions out there as I just said. One characteristic of projects is that they are different from operations, they are different from, you know, day-to-day or business as usual sort of activities that the organization undertakes. In a nutshell, or roughly speaking, projects are one-off sort of activities and operations are routine, ongoing efforts within the organizations. In that sense, projects are outside day-to-day operations or business as usual sort of activities.
So you need to be clear-cut in terms of the difference between projects and operations because if you confuse or conflict projects then you run the risk of using the wrong tools to cater to specificities of projects as opposed to operations.
As you have seen, projects are different from day-to-day activities that an organization undertakes. In a community mobilization, community assemblies and internal meetings are generally part of these day-to-day activities, since they are embedded in the routine of a community, concerned with operational objectives and since they don’t have an end finishing date. On the other hand, a community market event and the construction of a school are classified as projects, since they are unique and limited in time.
In your e-portfolio:
In which projects are your community engaged at this moment?
What are the main routines of your community?
Which operational activities does your community undertake?
