Random question- projects at work

[Pricelessadvice]

I see a lot of people on MN talking about their work projects or their team working on a ‘project’. I’ve never done a job that has projects so I genuinely have no idea what these projects might be… so I’m intrigued.

So if you work a job where you and your team get given projects, do you mind if I ask what a project might be?

Sorry for the random question, but I’m just curious because it sounds fun! (Like in school when you got told you were going to start a project in geography or whatever)

I always wonder this too.

Haha same, I always imagine people designing a new soup can or something equally random 😂

I work in Higher Education. The projects I work on might be around gathering requirements, piloting a new piece of software, evaluating the software, procuring it, and then rolling it across the institution which might require planning and delivering training.

Other projects are around creating new courses (which might be free and online).

It depends on what job you do but some of the ones I've been involved in are designing and implementing new processes, client projects (so client may want a new soup flavour so the team would design it, market it etc), customer communication projects- there are all different types

A lot of the time jobs like that have NDAs on what you can share about the projects.
One from many years ago that I worked on was a rail resignalling project where the team I was in designed a new signal box for a rail company and oversaw implementation.

It could be all sorts of things - I've been on projects where we looked at buying another company, on selling off part of ours, on new products, on revamping/ facelifting them, on moving production to other locations, changing suppliers, going into new markets (regulatory stuff, availability of transport, support for users), one in early COVID on whether our products could be used differently. Also ones where teams were challenged to come up with an idea based on a topic and you had to work up the problem, product/service/concept, and market it to the judges.

I used to have a project based role. In my case a 'project' was a large transaction/new venture/business change that a client was planning. There would be a 'project team' including finance advisers, lawyers, industry advisers, company directors etc put together to advise on the best way to do it/costs etc. The down side of this kind of role was that invariably everyone wanted all the work doing to incredibly tight deadlines, often including calls late at night/working through the weekend etc. When the project was done the client team would all have time off to celebrate where as we'd have the next project starting as the last one was ending.

I work for a consultancy company so our Clients give us projects to investigate / research / solve their problems

I’m a Project Manager so that’s all I do 😂

I'm a civil engineering designer so everything we do is projects. They might be buildings, railways, roads, flood defense etc. So we might do a feasibility report for a project in early planning stages, or a soil investigation, or design some parts of it and create the drawings and specifications for the builders/contractors to construct the development. Some projects are just a few weeks and some go on for years. I like the variety, not the pressure!

I am a project manager OP, projects can be for anything, new IT systems, buildings, large scale infrastructure. They can be to explore solutions to problems or implement organisational change for example.

Lots of places run ‘projects’ which are just pieces of work not run to specific project principles but most proper projects will involve a distinct type of methodology and involve no end of paperwork, nothing fun like a school project at all.

Me too! And I've just done something very similar. Other projects involve things like when we moved to our new library, evaluating the spaces to see how students are using them. Some projects are very useful and important but other times I do feel like they are conjured up to give people things to do and to justify keeping people in jobs.

All my work is project based. I love it because every one is different a and I don't get bored. Normally it's a much bigger company need something doing with specialist skills, or a council or government department need us to test, design or review something, again when they don't have a specialist skills. An example (not real) could be designing an experiment to test if a new environmentally friendly road surface will be safe or modelling the effects of different incentives to reduce car use.

I work in software so everything is projects. The one I have just started today is to make some bespoke changes to a bit of software for one of our clients based on their specific activities. So for this one we will have a project manager who runs the show, product architect who's job it is to make sure our overall product still works right, consultant (me) to find out what the clients need and communicate between the project and the client, software developers to develop the code, quality testers to test it.

We will find out what the client needs, decide whether it's something we want to do, quote them for the cost of the change, design a solution that works, develop it, test it, get the clients to test it, and then make it live. This project will take about 2-3 months I think, the last one I worked on took 9 months, and was creating an entire new app from scratch, and had a much bigger team. It all depends on the size and nature of the work.

I'm in project management for the NHS. A project could involve building a new unit, trialling new equipment, setting up new IT systems, anything really!

However, not everything that is called a project IS a project.

An investment deal to buy a property, or a company. Or sell one. Or solve a problem with one.

This is really interesting! Thanks everyone!
I love hearing about the different types of work people do.

Wow, @Pricelessadvice what kind of work doesn’t involve projects?! I genuinely can’t imagine!

for us a project is anything involving a group of people collaborating on something new. I work in a creative field so we are normally creating something like a workshop or a performance, but the project also involves research, planning, marketing, documentation and evaluation.

Being a teacher. Sure we would have departmental meetings but there were no projects.

Running a livery yard. No projects for me there (other than fixing fencing 😂- a seemingly endless project for me!!)

Previous jobs-
Being an estate agent- no projects
Office manager- no projects, just overseeing the day to day running of the office (apprenticeship based so tutors worked solo with their own caseload)

I'm a designer and cad tech. A 'project' could be an elevation for a kitchen, a 3d model of a garden, a scale lighting plan or technical drawing for a water feature. Or several of these for a singular project. Usually project is called client name front garden/pantry/floor plan etc if I'm doing multiple parts.

I have 'client companies', they will then work with a 'customer', they will give us a project.

A project is generally a distinct and defined piece of work that has a clear start, end and and aims to deliver something that is either new or changed Usually (but doesn’t have to) involves cross functional teams working to a set budget and deadline for that piece of work. When the project has delivered what was expected the project teams disbands, management of the delivered thing moves into day to day operations. Example : setting up a help desk is a project, working on/managing the help desk after delivery is not .

In reality it’s a lot more complex than that (PM circa 30years 😱) but that’s it in a nutshell.

I work in Cybersecurity Governance, Risk & Compliance, within my role I am Accountable for some projects that my team is leading and also Contribute to lots of projects across the organisation.

Types of projects I lead:

1. Implementing a new security standard (like ISO27001) and obtaining certification
2. Sourcing, assessing, purchasing and implementing a new system like an Antivirus solution
3. Developing new Policies, Standards and Procedures

Types of projects I contribute to:

1. Product team are developing a new application. I will feed in relevant security control requirements and sign off on things like Architecture and Data Flow diagrams
2. Commercial Office want to start selling Products or Services in a new country, I will assess Provacy and CyberSecurity legislative requirements to see whether we meet them or would need to make changes, if we need to make changes I’ll identify all of those and decide what teams they will be owned by and then track them through.
3. If we’re bidding for a new client, or implementing a new product/service for a client then I’ll review the contractual requirements and figure out where we have gaps, what needs to be done to fix those and who needs to do it.