Project - What is Project???

We hear "project" too frequently during our daily and professional life. "When will you start the project?", "I have problems in my project", "I am in the project team" ... etc. But are we using the "project" appropriately? What is the definition of project? What is considered as project and what is not a project? In this article, we will describe the project and give an example for a project.

 

What is a project?
Project is a temporary endeavor with a beginning and an end. This is important. Project should have a beginning and it should have an ending. A project cannot go over time periodically. Project should also create a unique product, service or result. If it’s not unique, for instance if you are producing the same product in an assembly line, then you are not working on a project.

Why do we initiate a project?
There can be several reasons of why a project is initiated. But we will list the most common reasons of why projects are initiated here.

1- A project might be initiated due to the market demand

For example, women drivers prefer to use smaller cars in traffic. Due to this market demand in the last years, car manufacturers are producing small cars especially for women. So producing a small car for women might be the reason of a project for a car manufacturer.

2- Strategic Opportunity/Business Need

There might be a harsh competition in a sector. For example, in the smartphone industry, as you know, there’s a harsh competition between Samsung and Apple. And they try to beat each other. And in order to do so, they release new versions of their smartphones with extended features and functionalities frequently. So this might be a reason for a project in Samsung or Apple.

 

3-Social need

Food is a basic need of the humanity. And there are several African countries fighting with the hunger. In order to provide food for the children in Africa, UNICEF might start a project and this would be an example of social need.

4- Environmental Consideration

Water and air pollution is becoming major problems of big cities around the world. Several cautions are taken and several projects are initiated to reduce air and water pollution in cities around the world. For instance, green buildings, buildings that generate their own electricity or reuse the water are examples for this category.

5- Customer Request

There are several service companies and vendors in the market. For instance, for a telecom operator, Ericsson, Nokia, and Huawei are examples of major telecommunication vendors. When a mobile operators ask for a new system in their network, this would be an example of customer request from vendor point of you.

 

6- Technological Advance

A new project can be initiated in order to do an existing activity or process better. For instance, if a new machine will increase the production speed in a factory, in order to take the advantage of this technological advance, a new project might be initiated to integrate this new machine.

Last project initiation reason I will be listing here is

7- Legal requirement

Let’s consider that, there are problems in regulations of miner stations in a country. And in order to improve the conditions of the mine workers, the government has released some regulations. And each employer has to obey these rules by the government. So in order to improve these conditions of the miner stations, the mine stations may want to start a new project.



We can give you one example of a project as the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco. It started in 1933 and ended in 1937. So it has a beginning and an ending. It was temporary it did not take for several years or till today to build this bridge. And It has been built only once and it’s unique in the world. There is not any identical Golden Gate bridge in somewhere else around the world.

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