School and university At schools, educational institutes and universities, a project is a
research assignment - given to a student or group of students - which generally requires a larger amount of effort and more independent work than that involved in a normal essay assignment. It requires students to undertake their fact-finding and analysis, either from library/internet research or from gathering data empirically. The written report will typically contain sections on the project's inception, analysis, findings and conclusions.
Project management In project management, a project consists of a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique
product,
service or result. Another definition is a
management environment that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more
business products according to a specified
business case. Projects can also be seen as temporary organizations. Project
objectives define target status at the end of the project, reaching of which is considered necessary for the achievement of planned benefits. They can be formulated as
SMART criteria: Projects are often guided by a
steering group. • Specific • Measurable (or at least evaluable) achievement • Achievable (recently Agreed to or Acceptable are used regularly as well) • Realistic (given the current state of organizational resources) • Time terminated (bounded) The evaluation (measurement) occurs at the project closure. However, a continuous guard on the project progress should be kept by monitoring and evaluating.
Civil and military construction and industry infrastructure In civil, military and industry (e.g. oil and gas) infrastructure, capital projects refer to activities to construct and install equipment, facilities and buildings. As these activities are temporary endeavors with clear start and end dates, the term "project" is applied. Because the results of these activities are typically long-standing infrastructure, with a life measured in years or decades, these projects are typically accounted for in financial accounting as capital expenditures, and thus they are termed "capital projects".
Computer software In
computer software, a project can consist of programs, configuration definitions and related data. For example, in
Microsoft Visual Studio, a "solution" consists of projects and other definitions.
Corporate finance In
corporate finance, "project" is often used to refer new
capital investments; these will span a spectrum of size and / or purpose (money making or cost saving). "Projects", then, == Types ==