When Mike replied to my blog on the 21st, he said:
Thats just a really deep way of saying, ‘I have a job that makes me think.’
Er, well, actually it’s more than that. By saying that projects are journeys, I mean they are a means of going from one place to another. The skillset that I had before the TVC site was different from the skillset I have now. The things I know about our church are different. The way I approach working on the site now is different than when I started.
It’s also the same where I work. One particular project I’m working on now has to do with deploying a CRM tool to a sales organization. Once you get involved in enterprise-wide systems, you start to learn all sorts of things about the enterprise–both its people and its systems. I have learned a lot in the past several months on this project and, if all goes well, I will be able to look back several months from now and see what I’ve learned and accomplished and, perhaps more importantly, see how I can use those learnings on future ventures.
Mike included in his comment my remark, Systems design is both passive and active; it’s simultaneously something that you do and that happens to you.
This highlights my point about the journey. When you embark on a project, it’s not immediately clear what information is known and what is unknown. It’s not clear what is to be built and with what reqiurements. It’s not clear where the budget is coming from. It’s not clear who will take ownership of the completed product. It’s not even clear whether or not the proposed idea is even going to work. This is an epistemological problem–how do you know what you know?–which is, I think, really unique to project management and delineates it from other work.
Jobs have a relatively constrained set of rules by which you play. These are usually understood well in advance (“I fold papers and stuff envelopes”) and determine the majority of your choices. Systems design is way different. There are constraints that go into systems design, but they are not all well known at the start and are learned along the way.
True, this does make me think, but stating that projects are journeys isn’t just a flowery way of saying so. 
A project is just another job. You have nothing, or very little when it starts and a product at the end. It actually kinda bothers me that it is being thought of differently.
Actually, the difference between a job and a project is fairly well defined. The Wikipedia definition isn’t great (and I might just go change it myself after this blog), but a project is, essentially, the coordination of resources within a set of constraints (such as time and money) to accomplish a goal. That goal is inherently the creation of of something new that didn’t previously exist.
If I could perhaps rework the terminology a bit:
==
- work
- an ongoing process of doing what is necessary to run the business
- e.g. turning on the lights, maintaining software, filing paperwork
- project
- a time-bound process of creating something new for the business
- e.g. installing new light fixtures, designing a new software application, creating a new filing system
- job
- a role that may encompass work, projects, or a combination of both
==
So, for example, you could have a job that encompasses work (such as grading students’ papers) and projects (such as creating a marching band program). Make sense?
Work and projects are different in what they produce, so they need to be managed differently. Imagine you’re a widget-maker. You enter the office every day and sit down at your desk and crank out widgets–maybe 30 or 40 per day. This is work. Your knowledge of widget technology is fairly static and your focus for improvement is on output–perhaps your bonus is determined by the number of widgets you produce. This is how you manage work.
Perhaps your company wants to be the world leader in widget development and they’ve tasked you with inventing the next best widget. This is a project. What do you do? You set goals and meet with widget content-experts to get their feedback. You make plans to try out different widget designs. You go looking for money in the organization to develop your widget. A timeline is most likely given to you (and it’s most likely by freakin’ marketing) to have new widget development completed in six months. This is how you manage a project.
Now imagine yourself an employer. You have people on your payroll that do work and people that do projects. The people who do work keep the business running so you can make money to pay your bills. The people who do projects advance the business in ways that make new money–either by developing processes that create efficiencies (which results in savings), or by developing processes that may create new opportunities (which results in capital). For example, a business can undertake the project of launching an e-business portal (that term sounds so 1997), which results in sales in a new market that didn’t previously exist and therefore new money.
Now, you’re still that employer. Which kinds of employees are you going to be more excited about? Most likely, the project people–they’re the ones bringing in the new money to the business. This is why business are all gaga about project-based work, and why lots of people are getting involved with project management.
“Er, well, actually it’s more than that. By saying that projects are journeys, I mean they are a means of going from one place to another.”
They are a means of having nothing and then having something. However, before we can continue we must come across a common definition for what a project is. You defined project and job as follows:
Job: a role that may encompass work, projects, or a combination of both
Project: a time-bound process of creating something new for the business e.g. installing new light fixtures, designing a new software application, creating a new filing system
I very much like these definitions. A job encompasses projects and projects are something that is done for the business. However, Project needs a second definition.
Projects CAN, however, have great personal growth. Lets use the topic of religion as an example. ‘Bob’ questions his faith, that he has believed strongly in all his life. He sets out to do as much research as possible, learns, expands his knowledge, participates in church activities (possibly seeking out new churches or religion branches) and then comes to a conclusion about his faith.
So i would like to add a secondary definition to project (completely separate from the wonderful one you provided):
Secondary Project: A personal endeavor to satisfy one’s needs, desires, or goals.
With these definitions in hand, I completely stand by what I said before, “Thats just a really deep way of saying, ‘I have a job that makes me think.’”
My job description states that I will develop and program applications of the companies web servers (details, names and such specifically left out to make it more general. I can copy and paste in another post if you would like).
“Must develop and program” … that sounds an awful lot like a project to me. But it *IS* my job to do it. Sometimes I will learn something new on these projects and sometimes I don’t.
Now I would like to use an example of a project from another section of the library, the cataloging department. Cataloger A is called into the bosses office and told that they are supposed to work on this new project, lets call it Z. It encompasses this and that, and Cataloger A runs off to do Z.
Projects are not in A’s job description … They are expected as part of the tasks through the year. But, Z is basically the same thing that A does all the time.
In this project, I am specifically thinking of something that I am working on in conjunction with the cataloging department now (Digital Collections).
Very little project management is needed for Cataloger A’s work to be done. He is merely a mark on a chart for me that I can refer to when i have a cataloging based question. But, it is still very much a project for the business (that should over time generate income for the library). While it is a piece of a larger project, it is separate from mine … one in which a complete flow chart of his own could be drawn … if it was warranted. In fact, they were completely separate projects to start with.
My point, is that we are still just doing our jobs. My project includes programming and development. His project includes applying labels (metadata) to objects in my system. One of us has learned a great deal (I suppose this is the the journey you refer too) and one of us has not.
But, in reference to that journey I would like to say that “Learning and Expanding Skills” is just part of the JOB of being a Programmer and Developer. You have to learn else you will be left behind.
Thus, my job just makes me think harder than installing new light fixtures in the building (a no brainer for a skilled electrician, while an apprentice will learn a great deal)
“This is why business are all gaga about project-based work, and why lots of people are getting involved with project management.”
This is why it is all just a Buzz word. And i hate buzz words and fad technology with a passion.
Like I said before, project management advances are great and wonderful things. Because organizing projects these days is VERY difficult if you have a very large project with a lot of people …. especially if they are spread all over the world.
But, its still just doing your job. And being project based verses job based is the difference between writing the scripts/building the robots that replace the less skilled workers or being one of those less skilled workers that just got replaced by a very small shell script.