What makes a project a project?
Typically work falls into a couple of buckets: tasks and projects. Tasks might be things like writing blog posts, returning emails, scheduling and fulfilling orders, reviewing others' work, talking with customers. What do these things have in common? They’re recurring work you've encountered before, you know how to complete, and likely follow existing processes.
Projects are different. Projects are chunks of work that challenge you and your team to work outside the bounds of repeating tasks or processes. And recognizing when you need to treat work like a project rather than a task ensures you put the right resources and structure into place to get work done effectively. It's helpful to think of things that are a project when you need to take time to discover stakeholder expectations, define a project scope, and communicate project progress throughout work.
What does that mean in concrete terms? I define a project as meeting one or more of the following criteria (not all of these must be true for it to be a project!):
You're developing a new process that will be followed in future to accomplish tasks
You're creating a work product that requires contributions from more than one team
You're working towards a finite goal or deadline
You're working on requirements from folks outside of the team accomplishing the work
Asking yourself these questions can help clarify how to approach work.
Once you've identified that you have a project on your hands, what's next? It's helpful to get buy-in from other teams that they agree this work merits a project effort. I don't usually find this piece controversial; generally, folks will appreciate that you're seeking to clarify concrete requirements, resources, and timing. If you get pushback here, it's worth listening carefully to ensure you're not overcomplicating simple work.
If you're aligned with your colleagues on identifying a project, it's time to kick into your project discovery phase. Check out our Project Management Handbook for a step-by-step guide to conducting thorough project discovery to get work started right, and dig into our project brief template for a helpful tool to document your goals and work plan.
