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Improve Your Project Management: What is a project

by Phil Baguley

Projects certainly aren’t a new ‘thing’– they‘ve have been around for a long time. The Pyramids, Hadrian’s Wall, the Parthenon and Stonehenge – all of these were, once upon a time, projects. Contemporary projects include the Channel Tunnel, the 553-metre high CN tower in Toronto and the 3910-metre long Akashi- Kaikyo bridge in Japan. But what do these and the millions of modern-day projects that we see in our lives have in common?

The answer is that they are all about change – about creating the new or even changing the old. When this happens it’s usually because of a project.

But that isn’t all what a project is about. For it’s also a mechanism, a process that:
• is transient
• has both a start and an end date
• has a specific, defined and unique outcome
• is planned, often in detail
• has a budget
• involves many people with different but defined responsibilities and tasks.

Managing a project isn’t easy. In its fullest form, it involves creating, defining, planning, monitoring, controlling and delivering – all undertaken in such a way that the defined project outcomes are realized to time and to budget. When this happens it becomes obvious that the project not only enhances our ability to create change – it also enables us to do that efficiently and effectively.


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