Project Management as a subject has been there for decades & almost everyone during the course of their education & professional life have made some understanding of the project management. Organizing a college festival, implementing ERP in an organization for improvement, building a new manufacturing facility, launching NASA sponsored space shuttle, developing new electronic gadget, a passenger car or life saving pharma drug are all examples of different projects and they all need project management.
While all above examples and many more are definitely projects, each one of them has different objectives, outcomes, scale etc. & hence needs a very different treatment in terms of methodology, progress measurement metrics, planning & execution & so on. If one were to classify the projects at 50,000 ft. view it would be:
Revenue Projects or External Projects:
These are the projects done for an external customer against a financial or equivalent compensation. Some examples of these are building infrastructure like airports, outsourced software projects etc.
–Internal Projects: These are the projects where the projects are done for internal improvisation, capacity expansion etc. These are funded internally. Some examples of these are CapEx projects, Six Sigma or IT deployment projects etc.
NPD Projects:
These are the projects to develop new products or services which will generate further revenue for the sponsoring organization. Some examples of these are automotive companies developing new & improved car models, pharmaceutical companies launching new products etc.
Each one of the above categories can further be classified base on the industry solution but that’s going into further details. By & large any project one can conceive can be put into one of the above category. Each of the above categories of projects needs very different mind-set, skill sets, resources etc. besides different methodologies, tools, metrics & so on. These differences may well be the subject of another blog on another day. As a starting point if you have taken up a new project, just find out as which of the above categories your project belongs to by doing a simple dip test from the classification above and then go from there by using the art & perhaps a little bit of science of project management for that category or type of project.
About the Blog:
The blog is written by internal marketing team of ProductDossier based on their experience dealing with different types of projects for different customers. ProductDossier flagship product TouchBase, is an enterprise software product platform combining the essential functionality of CRM, Project Management, Business Process Management & Financial Systems in an integrated manner. TouchBase is built to manage different projects types as mentioned above.
