Project or not - Examples
Project management book Delft
During my studies at Delft, I had to read a book about project management. I think it started with an example where something new and out-of-the-ordinary had to be done within a company (product the annual reports? Organise a company picknick before summer?). Several folks within that company had an idea about how to go about:
- Treat it as regular work within a certain department (HR?)
- Someone will do it ad-hoc somewhere on the side
- Treat it as a project.
Allocate EANs
A customer once purchased a set of 100,000 free EANs. I manage those in a database. Occasionally, the customer asks me for some of these, e.g. can you give me 61 free EANs?. I've done that between 5 and 20 times over the last couple of years and it's always a bit of a tedious job to do, but it's hardly a project: It's supposed to be routine work and it quite is. It also doesn't require a 'focused effort', eventhough it's a bit of work.
It does however, involve a bit of programming code. So every time I do this, I create a new directory with usually one file in it.
Complicated monthly invoice
Once a month, I produce a rather complicated invoice that contains a lot of separate items. It usually takes about 3 hours to produce it. I've tried outsourcing it, but that didn't work out so far. Some parts of this job are now automated, which saves a bit of time. It's still a tedious job.
This is not a project: It's routine since I do it every month. And it should be part of Overhead