Lesson 1: What Is a Project?
A project is a temporary effort, with a start and an end date, whose goal is to produce a unique deliverable or service. In this lesson we define what a project is and its characteristics, meet the triple-constraint (Iron Triangle) and Diamond models, distinguish a project from a business process, a
In brief: a project is a one-time task with a beginning and an end that produces something unique — always balancing scope, time, and budget.
- Project
- A temporary effort with a start and end, aimed at producing a unique deliverable or service; one-time, complex, requiring cross-domain resources, and characterized by uncertainty.
- Iron Triangle (Triple Constraint)
- The three sides from which project quality derives: scope, time, and budget. Changing one affects the others.
- Diamond (Rhombus) model
- A model that places the customer's requirements and expectations at the center, surrounded by time, budget, quality, and scope.
- Pure process
- A repetitive operational activity that yields the same output each cycle (like a production line), unlike a project that yields a unique deliverable.
- Standish CHAOS study
- A study classifying projects into 3 groups: successful (met all parameters), challenged (completed but overran), and failed (cancelled/never deployed).
- PMI (Project Management Institute)
- The Project Management Institute; defined a project (1969) as a complex, non-routine, one-time effort bounded in time and budget, to create a unique deliverable.
- Scope
- The project's work boundary — what is included and what is excluded. A central side of the Iron Triangle.
