Why is EVERYTHING such a Project!?

"Project's really seem to be popping up any where and every where these days; corporations, non-profits, government organizations and even mundane, personal, household tasks turn into projects! People use the term 'project' way too lightly. And NOW there is an entire profession after managing projects" exclaimed my best friend, a budding public policy analyst for the government. 

She did have a point.

But the purpose of her mini rant was stressing her confusion over why Project Management is a formalized profession, if everything and anything in daily life is a project. What is the big deal? Why get Project Management education and skills?

Well THAT is precisely why, is my answer. 

Let's think about this: when do we call something a project? Likely when something is outside our normal routine of activities, causes a significant change in our life or will lead to a better result. In any case, this activity is a temporary endeavour that will lead to a positive outcome when completed. 

But then have you also noticed that it is inherint in human nature to procrastinate on anything that is outside the scope of our day to day activities? It is SO hard to bring about change. It is equally hard to get other people to join you to make the change. Now imagine if a big organization that spends 100%  of its time managing its day to day operations, requires a change to become better? Who makes this change? How do we get people to continue their day to day work but also spend time towards making the change happen? How to we influence leaders to keep the end goal in sight? How do we control the money we spend on creating that change? How do we ensure that the change happens on time so that we obtain our benefits? The list can go on and on, but for ALL this we have Project Managers. 

As globalzation occured, industries were pressurized to become more competitive. An outcome of trying to become more competitive was to be more innovative in the use of resources, time, technology, which often required organizations, to change the old methods and introduce new ones. Organizations found that they could transition from the old to the new by putting a project in place to enable the organization to transition. As the need for change became greater and greater, projects became larger, more expensive and started to engulf organizational resources. Project Managers were put in place to control all this and to orchestrate the work of multiple resources to reach the end goal.

Organizations began to see the great benefit in creating skills and standards for Project Managers, so that they were truly equipped to lead such great changes.As a result, Project Management is now a formalized profession. 

I am shocked everytime I conduct a job search and see the vast number of postings pop up requiring Project Managers. Project Management is truly one of the leading professions in our current economic climate and is certainly one to stay for the future as global markets continue transforming. 

"See when you think of it this way, it all comes together and makes perfect logical sense", I told my public policy analyst friend.

She got my point.