1.1 Defining a Project
When people hear the word "project," they often think of large initiatives — major IT rollouts, construction work. But a project doesn't have to be huge. Plenty of everyday work qualifies, as long as it has a clear goal and a defined endpoint.
The Project Management Institute (PMI) puts it this way:
"A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result."
Two characteristics carry most of the weight in that definition:
- Temporary: A project has a defined beginning and end. Unlike ongoing operations, it concludes once its goal is achieved.
- Unique deliverable: The outcome is something new — a product, service, or result that didn't exist in that form before.
A few common examples:
- Developing a new product
- Implementing a system to automate an existing workflow
- Planning and hosting an internal company event
- Designing and rolling out a customer-service improvement
What ties them together is a clear objective and a defined endpoint. Once you can spot those two traits, it gets easier to recognise which initiatives in your day are real projects — and which are just busywork wearing a project's clothes.
How this looks in AB
Every workspace in AB Project Management is shaped around exactly these two PMI traits. Creating a new project asks you for a start date, a target end date, the members involved, and a description of what's being delivered — those four fields are "temporary" and "unique deliverable" made concrete. If a piece of work resists those fields (no clear end, no specific deliverable), that's a useful signal that you're probably looking at routine operations dressed up as a project.