Project or routine work?

What you will understand

• Distinguish a project from the operation that uses its results.
• Explain change, temporary work, cross-functional work, uniqueness and uncertainty.
• Separate a delivered product from the outcome and benefit it is intended to support.

The idea

An organisation needs to keep its current service working while improving what that service can do. These activities can overlap, but they need different management. A project brings people together for a bounded change; operations keep delivering the service afterwards. A useful first question is therefore: what new result are we creating, and when will responsibility for its continued use move elsewhere?

PRINCE2 organises a project around a temporary team and the investment reasoning for the products it will create. Temporary describes the management arrangement, not the lifespan of the product. A bridge may last decades even though the team that commissions it works together for only a few years. Planning should make the end of that temporary responsibility clear.

Five characteristics help distinguish project work from business as usual: change, temporary, cross-functional, unique and uncertainty. Change concerns the difference being introduced. Temporary means a beginning and an end. Cross-functional means that different specialisms or organisational groups contribute. Unique means that some combination of requirements, people, location or circumstances differs. Uncertainty follows because the team cannot know everything in advance.

A familiar type of work can still be a project. Fitting out another branch may use a standard design, yet its landlord, users and access restrictions introduce a different setting. Conversely, a difficult or expensive activity is not automatically a project. Processing a large volume of familiar orders remains an operational service unless a distinct, bounded change is being organised.

Separate outputs, outcomes and benefits when explaining the purpose. An output is a delivered product, such as a revised stock system. An outcome is the changed situation resulting from its use, such as staff replenishing shelves earlier. A benefit is a measurable improvement valued by stakeholders, such as fewer lost sales. Installing the system does not prove that the improvement has happened.

Project management brings planning, delegation, monitoring and control together so the change can be delivered within agreed objectives. It does not replace the specialist skills that create products. It also does not turn uncertainty into certainty. Instead it makes assumptions visible, assigns responsibility and provides ways to decide what to do as evidence changes. Operations and project staff must agree the eventual handover.

Project or ongoing service?

Points to remember

• Recognise all five characteristics rather than relying on cost or difficulty.
• A temporary project can create a long-lived product.
• Product completion alone does not demonstrate benefit realisation.

Your takeaway

Identify the change, its temporary organisation and the handover to ongoing use. Keep the product, the resulting change in behaviour and the measurable benefit distinct.