Projects are about Time, Products about Value

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2022-12-03 20:00:23

Project management is often wrongly confused with product management. To be fair, it can be a delicate distinction, and the fact that they both start with p doesn’t help. (Not to mention program management!)

The way I’ve been thinking about the difference recently can be captured by the following, where $J$ is a measure of project success and $D$ a measure of product success:

A project can be defined simply as a set of tasks completed by a deadline, or according to a schedule. Usually a project also is something that’s been done before, so there’s already a sense of tasks required and how long they’ll take.

Think of projects like constructing a new home, a very common project where tasks have to be completed in a certain sequence–first the foundation, then the structure, then plumbing, electrical, walls, etc–and there’s a target deadline.

In other words, project management is all about managing the execution a set of pre-defined tasks and, in particular, managing how fast you execute those tasks. The more ahead of schedule a project is, the better. So project success ($J$) is proportional to $\frac{1}{time}$.