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Advice is needed, please. I'm a learning student and very new to project management. I was thinking about a project but I want to be sure that it can be considered as a project : the title is close to ( sorry for my English ) : ''Reduction of rejects in factory (where I'm working) for the year 2012 '' A quality control procedure will be established to achieve that goal.

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Does this 'project wannabe' has a clear objective, i.e. something will clearly be achieved or built? If so, you have a project.

Thinking broadly, I believe that as long as you can conceive an expected output, it's a project. THIS question talks about specifically Software, but might help you. There's also THIS one who goes in another direction but might also put some lights on your question.

Hope it helps.

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  • Thank you very much for your answer. The objective is ''reduction of rejects or defective pieces for the year 2012''
    – Elias
    Commented May 27, 2012 at 13:04
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A project is something with a clear start and end. A process is something that lives forever. Sounds like a project to me. Creating the procedure is most likely a project, while running it on an ongoing basis isn't.

Good luck with your project - sounds like you will learn a lot!

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  • Thank you very much for your answer. The redult of the project is '' reducing the defective pieces during the year 2012''. This will be done using a control quality process that will be running every day till the end of the year to see what is the final result
    – Elias
    Commented May 27, 2012 at 13:07
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"Creating a new procedure" certainly sounds like it could be a project. The PMBoK definition is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.

A project has a start and an end so based on your title, you have a project. This assumes that your project has a document as final product that will be used by someone else in day-to-day operations.

Actually using that new procedure in day-to-day operations is not a project.

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  • Thank you vary much for your answer. Yes a new procedure will be created to reduce the defective produced pieces for the year 2012. Let's say reducing them by 60 %
    – Elias
    Commented May 27, 2012 at 13:09
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If something is a 'project' depends on the definition of 'project'. For various context, people and methodologies 'projects' can mean diffent things.

Others allready pointed to some Project Management Context type of definitions, so here is the GTD (David Allens personal producivity method Getting Things Done) defintion.

David says: "If it takes more then one step to complete, it is a project." Put another way, if you can answer the questions:

  • what does "done" look like?
  • what does "wild success" look like?
  • what is the (single) next step to get closser to DONE

you have a project.

In your case, put in a GTD context, you have an "area of focus" probably for the next 3 to 12 months with a myrad of projects contained in it. In a project management context, you certainly have a (big) project on your hands.

Good luck!

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  • For the three questions I was thinking that the answers were: 1- The ''done'' is the result. Let's say that the goal was to reduce the defective pieces by 60 %. The redult will be more or less. Negative or positive. 2- success will be a result equal or higher than 60 3- Sorry the third question is a bit difficult to answer. But I would guess that it's a result smaller but close to 60 %.
    – Elias
    Commented May 27, 2012 at 13:15
  • the 3. Question works as a trigger to make a first step in the right direction, and is very much depending on how much you allready know how to proceed. e.g. "Draft Milstoneplan." Next actions start with a verb. The DO part is the only part in project management which brings the project closer to the end, but is easy to overlook in PM. The next step for you basicly consits of "Plan the next steps" or "execute the project plan"
    – Huibert Gill
    Commented May 29, 2012 at 7:37
  • As for the other 2 Questions: DONE might be: "We have a process and system in place to continously measure our quality. We have procedures describing how to to react in 95% of "bad" situations." and SUCCESS might be "After 6 months the new process yields at least 60% less defective pieces" (because quality loss can be handled quicker and better than before)
    – Huibert Gill
    Commented May 29, 2012 at 7:41

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