The defining characteristic of a process versus a project is repeatability and uniqueness.
... the best description I've ever heard. A bad analogy may be that the process is like day work, the project is like a contract.
In laymans, a process is a set of tasks that need to be done over and over for your organization to work. These tasks can be performed manually (by people in daylight conditions) or automatically (IT).
The eTOM business process system (www.tmforum.org) says that there are three types of processes:
- Strategy, infrastructure and product lifecycle management is a difficult way to say all the tasks that an organization must complete in order to plan and create new things.
- Operations are all daily tasks to support work and keep customers happy.
- Enterprise management - the rest ... As well as financial reporting, etc.
A project is a unique work with a beginning and a goal undertaken to achieve a goal.
.... guru
Laymans has many tasks that you perform only once to create, modify (or delete) the capabilities of your organizations (for example, infrastructure or products).
How are they the same
To add a little more confusion to this dynamic, project management is the process itself (see PRINCE2 www.prince2.com)
It will fit into the categories (1) Strategies, Infrastructure and Product (sorry for knocking out eTOM, there are many other frameworks like ITIL and SCOR , I am an expert at Telco, so I think that is the best.)
While each project has a start and end date, it is likely that your organization will build and change capabilities (infrastructure and products) forever. Thus, each project provides something else, but the steps or the set of tasks to be carried out to deliver the project must be the same every time (see [PRINCE2] [2]).
Nick mitchell
source share