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Home A thought ... Man will occasionally stumble over the truth but most of the time he will pick himself up and carry on as if nothing had happened.
So what is a Project?
We could follow the formal PRINCE2 definition:
"a management environment that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified business case."

This definition identifies firstly that "a project" needs to deliver something and secondly that there must be a business case to support it. In addition to helping us define a project, these two things are key to ensuring a project's success.
The Product.
Without a clear definition of what the project is aiming to deliver how can we hope to deliver it sucessfully. PRINCE2 uses the word "product" for the project's deliverable. This could be a physical product that we could identify with, e.g. a chair. It could just as easily be a document, a book or a manual for example, or a more complex item such as a computer network.

In our definition of our product we need to include the method and criteria that we will use to check, at the end of the project, that the product has actually been delivered.
The Business Case.
The decision to commence a project should always be firmly based on a business case. This should show what benefits the business is going to receive from the finished product and how much this is going to cost. If there is little benefit or the cost is too great then the project should not go ahead.

Pareto Analysis - for a Project Management view on this technique click here