Lesson 2: What Makes Work a Project: Projects vs Operations

Where this level fits

This level belongs to the largest exam domain, Project Management Fundamentals and Core Concepts (36% of the exam). Everything later in the course depends on one question: is this piece of work a project or not?

Reminder: this course is independent of PMI and is not an Authorized Training Partner. PMI's outline and guides are PMI's copyright and are not reproduced here. Download the current Examination Content Outline from pmi.org. No course can promise a pass.

Define a project from first principles

In PMI's terms, a project has two defining features. Learn both words exactly.

1. Temporary. The work has a definite start and a definite end.
2. Unique. The work creates a product, service or result that did not exist before in that exact form.

The three kinds of output are:

• Product: a thing, such as a bridge, a mobile app or a new model of bicycle.
• Service: a capability to do something for people, such as a new customer helpline.
• Result: an outcome or a piece of knowledge, such as a research report or a completed office move.

PMI's newest guidance puts extra weight on a third idea: a project is undertaken to create value. Value is the benefit the organisation or its customers gain. For the exam, hold all three ideas together: temporary, unique, value.

Read "temporary" and "unique" correctly

These two words cause most wrong answers. Apply these rules.

Temporary does NOT mean short.

• A project can last two weeks or ten years. What matters is that an end is intended.
• Temporary describes the project, not its output. Building a cathedral is temporary work. The cathedral may stand for centuries.
• A project ends when its objectives are met, or when it is stopped early because the objectives cannot be met or the need has gone.

Unique does NOT mean nothing is repeated.

• A builder may use the same design for 50 houses. Each house still has a different plot, a different customer and different ground conditions. Each build is a project.
• Look for something new in the output or its circumstances.

Recognise operations

Operations is the ongoing, repetitive work that keeps an organisation running. It has no planned end date. It produces the same output again and again, following established procedures. Its purpose is to sustain the business.

Analogy: designing and opening a new restaurant is a project. Cooking and serving meals every evening afterwards is operations.

Classify a scenario in three steps

Use this procedure on every "project or operations?" question.

1. Check for an end. Ask: is this work meant to finish? If no, it is operations.
2. Check for uniqueness. Ask: does it create something new? If it repeats the same output by the same routine, it is operations.
3. Justify in one sentence. State both features: "This is a project because it is temporary and produces a unique result."

Worked examples:

• Processing the monthly payroll. No end, same output each month. Operations.
• Installing a new payroll system. Ends when the system is live, and creates a new capability. Project.
• Answering customer support calls. Ongoing and repetitive. Operations.
• Developing a new vaccine. Ends with a result, and the result is new. Project.
• Manufacturing 10,000 identical phones a day. Operations. Designing that phone model was a project.

Note the pattern: the same organisation, and even the same department, does both kinds of work.

Follow the handover from project to operations

A project does not usually run what it creates. It hands the finished output to operations. The sequence is:

1. The project team builds the output, called the deliverable.
2. The customer or sponsoring organisation checks and accepts the deliverable.
3. The team transfers it to the operations staff, with the documentation, training and support they need.
4. The project is closed and the team is released to other work.
5. Operations uses and maintains the output. The benefits arrive over time.

Example: a hospital runs a project to install a new scanner. After testing and sign-off, radiology staff are trained and take ownership. The project ends. Scanning patients every day is operations, and that daily use is where the value is realised.

Two points to remember:

• Most of the value appears after the project has closed, during operations.
• A poor handover can waste a good project. Untrained staff cannot use a perfect system.

Understand why organisations run projects

Operations keeps an organisation as it is. Projects are how it changes.

• A project moves the organisation from its current state to a desired future state.
• Typical reasons to start one: a new customer need, a new law, a new technology, or a problem with how things work today.
• Projects are therefore the main tool for creating new value and delivering change.

What the exam asks about this

Expect short scenarios that describe a piece of work and ask you to classify it or pick the reason. Do this:

• Scan for end-date wording ("launch", "install", "develop", "by June") against ongoing wording ("daily", "routine", "maintain", "each month").
• Reject any option that says temporary means short, or that the output is temporary.
• Reject any option that says repeated elements stop work being a project.
• Besides multiple choice, the exam uses drag and drop, hot spot and animation-based items. A drag-and-drop item could ask you to sort activities into "project" and "operations" boxes, or to order the handover steps.

Key takeaways

• A project is temporary and creates a unique product, service or result, in order to create value.
• Temporary means a definite start and end. It does not mean short, and it does not describe the output.
• Unique work can still contain repeated elements.
• Operations is ongoing, repetitive work that sustains the organisation.
• The project hands its accepted output to operations, then closes. Operations realises most of the value.
• Projects are how organisations move from a current state to a future state.