A project is a type of assignment, typically involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a specific objective. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of events: a "set of interrelated tasks to be executed over a fixed period and within certain cost and other limitations". A project may be a temporary (rather than a permanent)

social system In sociology, a social system is the patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions. It is the formal Social structure, structure of role and status that can form in a smal ...

(

work system A work system is a socio-technical system in which human participants and/or machines perform tasks using information, technology, and other resources to produce products and services for internal or external customers. Typical business organization ...

), possibly staffed by

team A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal. As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to in ...

s (within or across

organization An organization or organisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences) is an legal entity, entity—such as ...

s) to accomplish particular tasks under time constraints. A project may form a part of wider

programme management Program (American English; also Commonwealth English in terms of computer programming and related activities) or programme (Commonwealth English in all other meanings), programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program m ...

or function as an ''ad hoc'' system.

Open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

"projects" or artists' musical "projects" (for example) may lack defined team-membership, precise planning and/or time-limited durations.

Overview

The word ''project'' comes from the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

word ''projectum'' from the Latin verb ''proicere'', "before an action", which in turn comes from ''pro-'', which denotes precedence, something that comes before something else in time (paralleling the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

πρό) and ''iacere'', "to do". The word "project" thus originally meant "before an action". When the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

initially adopted the word, it referred to a plan of something, not to the act of actually carrying this plan out. Something performed in accordance with a project became known as an "

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an a ...

". Every project has certain phases of development. Based on the

Project Management Institute The Project Management Institute (PMI, legally Project Management Institute, Inc.) is a U.S.-based not-for-profit professional organization for project management. Overview PMI serves more than five million professionals including over 680,0 ...

, a project can be defined as a "temporary endeavor" aimed to drive changes in teams, organizations, or societies. The output of a project is normally a unique product, service, or result. Projects can be short-term or long-term.

Cancellation

Project cancellation is the termination of a project prior to its completion and generally includes the cessation of access to

funding Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm use ...

and other project resources. Project cancellation may result from

cost overruns A cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, involves unexpected incurred costs. When these costs are in excess of budgeted amounts due to a value engineering underestimation of the actual cost during budgeting, they are known ...

schedule A schedule (, ) or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such thing ...

overruns, changes in

budget A budget is a calculation plan, usually but not always financial plan, financial, for a defined accounting period, period, often one year or a month. A budget may include anticipated sales volumes and revenues, resource quantities including tim ...

, change or

obviation Obviation may refer to: * A linguistic process involving the obviative (fourth person) * Bypass (disambiguation) {{Disambig ...

of the

goal A goal or objective is an idea of the future or desired result that a person or a group of people envision, plan, and commit to achieve. People endeavour to reach goals within a finite time by setting deadlines. A goal is roughly similar to ...

of the project,

political Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

factors, or any combination of those and other factors.

Contract A contract is an agreement that specifies certain legally enforceable rights and obligations pertaining to two or more parties. A contract typically involves consent to transfer of goods, services, money, or promise to transfer any of thos ...

s often stipulate the time and the manner in which a project may be cancelled. Contracted projects typically have a specified end date, when the contract may or may not be renewed; nonrenewal often has the same effect as cancellation but carries different legal ramifications.

Formal definition in the project-management realm

A project consists of a concrete and organized effort motivated by a perceived opportunity when facing a problem, a need, a desire or a source of discomfort (e.g., lack of proper ventilation in a building). It seeks the realization of a unique and innovative

deliverable A deliverable is a tangible or intangible good or service produced as a result of a project that is intended to be delivered to a customer (either internal or external). A deliverable could be a report, a document, a software product, a server upgr ...

, such as a product, a

service Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a ...

, a process, or in some cases, a scientific research. Each project has a beginning and an end, and as such is considered a closed dynamic system. It is developed along the 4 Ps of project management: Plan, Processes, People, and Power (e.g. line of authority). It is bound by the triple constraints that are calendar, costs and norms of quality, each of which can be determined and measured objectively along the project lifecycle. Some projects produce some level of formal documentation, the deliverable(s), and some impacts, which can be positive and/or negative.

Specific uses

School and university

A project is an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned and researched about by students. At schools, educational institutes and universities, a project is a

research Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

assignment - given to a student - which generally requires a larger amount of effort and more independent work than that involved in a normal essay assignment. It requires students to undertake their fact-finding and analysis, either from library/internet research or from gathering data empirically. The written report that comes from the project is usually in the form of a dissertation, which will contain sections on the project's inception, analysis, findings and conclusions.

Project management

In project management, a project consists of a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product,

or result. Another definition is a

management Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a Government agency, government bodies through business administration, Nonprofit studies, nonprofit management, or the political s ...

environment that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified

business case A business case captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task. Many projects, but not all, are initiated by using a business case. It is often presented in a well-structured written document, but may also come in the form of a short ver ...

. Projects can also be seen as temporary organizations. Project objectives define target status at the end of the project, reaching of which is considered necessary for the achievement of planned benefits. They can be formulated as

SMART criteria S.M.A.R.T. (or SMART) is an acronym used as a mnemonic device to establish criteria for effective Goal setting, goal-setting and objective development. This framework is commonly applied in various fields, including project management, employee per ...

:Carr, David
Make Sure Your Project Goals are SMART
PM Hut. Accessed 18. Oct 2009. Projects are often guided by a

steering group {{Short pages monitor