Project management - Processes (according to ISO 10006)

In books on management in general, the place given to project management is fairly modest. Although it has been implicitly practiced for centuries, it is often presented as an innovation. This is due to the recent multiplication of projects, imposed by increasing competition and the complexity of new techniques. As a result, a distinction has been made between operational and entrepreneurial modes of management [AG 10] . Nevertheless, few authors emphasize that there is a difference in the nature of these two modes.

Operational management is designed to ensure the long-term viability of an organization, by providing it with the means for stability (often slowly evolving), based on the repetition of known and optimized actions, thus acquiring a certain degree of security.

Project management, on the other hand, aims to move the company from one stable state to another, hopefully better one: it operates in an uncertain context, with temporary resources. There is discontinuity.

The difference between the two management modes is the same as in physics, between the study of transient regimes and that of permanent phenomena. The two do not follow the same logic. Operational management is based on a deterministic, or at least statistical, logic; project management takes place in a context that is more often than not unpredictable and rather chaotic.

The essential characteristic of a project is therefore that it is a temporary activity, with a beginning and an end, an identifiable target result and resources enabling an individual balance sheet (disconnected from the company's general balance sheet). The project is also unique (no two projects are ever the same), innovative and more or less complex (number and interweaving of stakeholders).

It is nevertheless part of the development of a company management program, between the research and production phases.