Datasheet

Chapter 1

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Establishing Project Management Fundamentals

The purpose of a project is to meet its goal and conclude. The purpose of

ongoing operations is to keep the organization functioning.

Now suppose you have company coming for dinner. If you’re like us, there’s a mad rush

20 minutes before the guests arrive to tidy up and run the vacuum to get all those dark fuzz-

ies off the carpet. Is this a project? No. It doesn’t fit the definition. Vacuuming is an ongoing

operation. Sure, you start and stop at a specified time (hopefully before the doorbell rings), but

there isn’t a unique product or service produced at the end. Every time you vacuum, you use the

same process and get the same result. And it’s seemingly a never-ending chore. Vacuuming must

occur every few days or so and it’s almost always performed in the same way. That describes

an ongoing operation. There is no clear start and end date, the tasks are repetitive in nature, and

generally the same result is produced over and over.

Ongoing operations may or may not follow a specific process, and they can

take on a million different forms. The process for one operation isn’t neces-

sarily the same as it is for another. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use the

templates and spreadsheets presented in this book for tracking ongoing oper-

ations or organizing other data or tasks. In fact, you may find several of the

forms and spreadsheets in this book useful for other applications, so feel free

to modify them and incorporate them into your routine.

Perhaps your boss approaches you with the following scenario: She’d like to consolidate

the four disparate networks in your organization into one network and clearly define the

roles and responsibilities for each of the team members under the new scenario. Is it a project?

Yes. It has a definite start and end date and it produces a unique product or service at its con-

clusion. However, when this project is over and the networks are successfully consolidated,

the process of monitoring and fine-tuning the network becomes an ongoing operation. This

scenario tends to occur quite often in the information technology field. A project is completed

and then assimilated into the ongoing, everyday work of the organization. For example, a

new software program is written to monitor customers’ buying patterns. When the software

is tested and implemented, another team of specialists takes over the day-to-day tasks of

monitoring the software and helping users work through problems.

In other industries, projects may come to a conclusion without being assimilated into

ongoing operations. The construction and manufacturing industries are some examples

that come to mind. Once you’ve constructed a building or produced a new product, it’s

turned over to the consumer. Table 1.1 recaps the characteristics of projects and ongoing

operations.

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