Adventure, Project or Business as Usual (BaU)?

Posted by John Thorpe on Dec 17, 2021 in PMChat Bloggers | Comments Off

In thinking about the APM 2020 Vision – a world in which all projects succeed, I got around to wondering what the word “project” actually means in this phrase. Is it me, or do we seem to have arrived at a situation where the word “project” is actually omnipresent and applied to anything that requires a wrapper, be it developing a new idea such as HS2, developing a football club or re-decorating a room? I wonder if some of our current projects should be redefined as adventures “ a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome ” so that we are totally clear that we have embarked on a path (rightly or wrongly) that holds no guarantee of success? At the same time, do we also need to start acknowledging that we have a blurry line where BaU is incorrectly defined as a project? Being radical, I can’t help thinking that a manufacturing engineer would see many construction projects as BaU? After all, are they not really just variances on a theme?