What is a project...

I'm taking a course in project management and leadership for PhD students. Quite interesting...

One of my immediate observations is the discrepancy between the academic definition of a project and what we call a project in the car industry. According to our Swedish textbook a project is an activity with

• a well defined goal
• during a well defined time period
• with pre-defined resources
• under particular work model

A vehicle project, for example a model year update, certainly fulfills the first three, but the work model is/should be the same as the one we use for a model year update of another vehicle (not including any kaizen).
There is not something unique working with a particular vehicle model that warrants creating a project, it is just another task. A huge task, but nevertheless...
A research project is a different thing, for example developing the architecture for a new generation of electrical systems. There most work and deliverables are new and have not been done before or at least not in the last 10 years...

The other thing that I noticed as major difference is that the textbook states it is (or should be) impossible to participate in more than one, or at most two, projects simultaneously. An engineer at an EESE department usually works in more projects than that...

This post is in a response to an email I got about my previous post on more personal observations...