How Projects Create Value, Drive Change, and Connect Strategy to Execution

Every discipline has a foundation — a set of first principles that explains why it exists, how it operates, and what it is trying to achieve. For project management, that foundation is articulated in Section 1.3 of the Standard for Project Management, and it covers far more than definitions. It examines how projects create organizational value, how governance structures guide and constrain project work, how project management and operations management relate to one another, and how portfolios, programs, and projects form an integrated management ecosystem.

This blog post explores each of those foundational elements in depth — offering context, practical insight, and real-world relevance for project professionals at every stage of their career.

1. Characteristics of a Project

To understand project management, one must first understand what a project actually is — and what distinguishes it from other types of organizational work. The standard identifies three defining characteristics that collectively set projects apart from ongoing operations.

Temporariness: Every Project Has an Ending

A project is not a permanent endeavor. It is initiated with purpose and concludes when that purpose has been fulfilled — or when it becomes clear it cannot be. This temporariness is not a weakness; it is what makes projects a focused, accountable vehicle for delivering specific outcomes.

A project typically reaches its conclusion under one of the following conditions:

• The project’s stated objectives have been achieved and the deliverables have been accepted.
• A governing body, sponsor, or the project team determines that the objectives will not — or cannot — be met.
• Resources such as funding, personnel, or physical assets are exhausted or no longer available.
• Changes in organizational strategy, market conditions, or the external environment eliminate the need for the project.
• Legal, regulatory, or compliance issues require the project to be terminated.

Importantly, while the project itself is temporary, its deliverables often endure. A software system built during a one-year project may serve its users for a decade. The temporary nature of the effort does not diminish the lasting impact of what is created.

Unique Context: No Two Projects Are Alike

Even when two projects share similar objectives or deliverables, the conditions surrounding them will differ. This is the concept of unique context — and it is one of the most underappreciated aspects of project work.

A project’s unique context is shaped by factors including its goals, scope, duration, geographic location, technology stack, quality requirements, cost constraints, risk profile, and the stakeholders involved. Any one of these variables can make a project behave differently from another that appears, on the surface, to be identical.

Consider a large residential development project. At the program level, it may involve a single construction vendor and operate within a single municipal district. Yet at the individual unit level, each home may involve different lenders, unique buyer requirements, customized floor plans, and distinct grading challenges from one plot to the next. That granularity of uniqueness demands tailored management approaches at every level.

The unique context of each project is not an inconvenience to be managed away — it is the very reason professional project management exists. Generic solutions rarely work. Success demands customized strategies.

Value Creation Through Organizational Change

The third and most strategically significant characteristic of a project is its purpose: to move an organization from its current state to a desired future state in pursuit of value.

Before a project begins, an organization exists in its current state — with its existing capabilities, processes, structures, and performance levels. The project is initiated to change one or more of those dimensions. The result, if successfully achieved, is the future state: a new level of capability, a new product, an improved process, or a transformed customer experience.

For complex transformations, the path from current to future state may not be direct. A transition state may be required — a structured, intermediate phase where the organization partially adopts new systems or ways of working before fully reaching the target condition. Managing this transition effectively is itself a critical project management competency.

The standard is clear on this point: project success is not measured simply by the delivery of outputs. It is measured by whether the organization actually reaches the future state — and whether stakeholders recognize the value that results.

2. Connecting Organizational Governance and Project Governance

Governance is one of the most important — and most frequently misunderstood — dimensions of project management. To navigate governance effectively, project professionals must understand two distinct but interdependent layers: organizational governance and project governance.

Organizational Governance: Direction and Control at Scale

Organizational governance encompasses the policies, processes, procedures, and decision-making frameworks that guide an entire organization toward its strategic and operational goals. It is typically overseen by executive leadership and reflects the expectations of a broad stakeholder ecosystem — regulators, shareholders, customers, employees, and the wider community.

In practice, organizational governance is shaped by a complex web of inputs: national laws, industry regulations, international standards, and the organization’s own internal policies. These inputs collectively define the parameters within which every portfolio, program, and project must operate.

Organizational governance influences project work in several critical ways:

• Enforcing legal, regulatory, and compliance requirements that all projects must respect.
• Defining the organization’s ethical, social, and environmental responsibilities.
• Establishing operational, legal, financial, and risk policies that govern resource use and decision-making.
• Promoting alignment between strategic objectives and portfolio, program, and project-level work.
• Ensuring that every initiative connects to the organizational mission and vision.
• Facilitating decision-making that maximizes value delivered across the entire value delivery system.

Project Governance: Focused Frameworks for Individual Projects

If organizational governance sets the rules of the game for the entire enterprise, project governance defines the rules of engagement for each individual match. Project governance is the adaptable framework that guides project management activities to create value through a unique product, service, or result — while remaining aligned with organizational, strategic, and operational goals.

In practical terms, project governance provides the structure, systems, processes, roles, responsibilities, and decision-making models that make a project manageable. Common governance tools include RACI matrices — which clarify who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each decision or deliverable — and governance boards, which provide oversight and escalation pathways.

Project governance also plays an important role in resource allocation. By prioritizing initiatives based on strategic value and available capacity, governance frameworks help prevent the resource conflicts and priority battles that can otherwise derail even well-planned projects.

A practical example: In a major product launch, a steering committee may be chartered to review project milestones at predetermined gates, enforce quality standards, and resolve issues that the project manager cannot address unilaterally. That steering committee is a governance mechanism — and its effectiveness can determine whether the project delivers its intended value.

The key distinction: Organizational governance provides direction and control for the entire organization. Project governance provides the specific processes and frameworks for managing individual projects effectively. Both are essential — and both must work in concert.

Project Initiation: Where Governance and Strategy Converge

Projects do not simply appear. They are authorized by organizational leaders in response to identifiable drivers — and those drivers should always connect back to the organization’s strategic objectives.

The factors that lead to project authorization typically fall into one of four categories:

• Meeting regulatory, legal, or social requirements — such as compliance with new legislation or environmental standards.
• Satisfying stakeholder requests or needs — including customer demands, employee concerns, or community expectations.
• Implementing or changing business or technological strategies — such as launching a new service line or adopting a new platform.
• Creating, improving, or fixing products, processes, organizations, or services — to address performance gaps or competitive pressures.

When leaders respond to these factors by authorizing projects, they are investing organizational resources in the belief that the resulting change will enhance the organization’s viability and competitive position. That belief must be grounded in a clear line of sight from the project’s objectives to the organization’s strategic goals.

Projects that cannot demonstrate this connection are, at best, inefficient uses of resources — and at worst, distractions from what matters most.

3. Operations Management and Project Management: Understanding the Distinction

In many organizations, project management and operations management are treated as interchangeable or at least deeply overlapping. In practice, they serve very different purposes — and understanding that difference is critical for both types of professionals.

What Operations Management Is

Operations management is focused on the efficient, effective, and sustained production of products and services. It manages the recurring processes that transform inputs — materials, components, energy, labor, and information — into outputs that customers value. The goal of operations management is continuous improvement and consistent delivery, not transformation.

Operations management is ongoing by nature. It does not have a defined beginning and end. It is not inherently unique. And it is not primarily concerned with creating organizational change — it is concerned with sustaining the organization’s current capabilities at optimal performance levels.

Where Projects and Operations Intersect

Despite their differences, project management and operations management are not isolated from one another. They interact regularly, and those interactions must be managed with care. The most significant intersections occur at the following points:

• When new products or services are being developed — the project team creates the deliverable; operations inherits and sustains it.
• When existing processes or delivery operations are being improved — the project team designs and implements the change; operations absorbs it.
• At the end of a product’s lifecycle — a project may be required to wind down, retire, or replace a product that operations can no longer sustain.
• At project closeout and iteration boundaries — where knowledge, resources, and deliverables are formally transferred.

These transfer points are among the most critical — and most frequently mismanaged — moments in the project lifecycle. When a project team throws its deliverables ‘over the wall’ to operations without adequate handoff planning, the result is often operational disruption, adoption failure, and unrealized benefits.

Engaging operations teams early in project planning is not optional — it is a strategic imperative. The earlier operations leaders are involved, the more likely the project’s outcomes will be successfully integrated into the organization’s ongoing work.

The following table summarizes the key distinctions between project management and operations management:

4. Portfolio, Program, Project, and Operations: An Integrated Ecosystem

Organizations do not manage a single project in isolation. They manage portfolios of initiatives, programs of related projects, individual projects, and ongoing operations — simultaneously, and often in competition for the same resources and stakeholder attention. Understanding how these four levels relate to one another is essential for anyone seeking to deliver value at scale.

Projects: The Building Blocks of Change

At the most granular level, the project is where value is actually created. Projects can stand alone as independent initiatives, or they can be organized into larger structures — programs and portfolios — to amplify their impact.

When managed individually, a project delivers a specific outcome with a defined scope, timeline, and budget. But individual projects, by their nature, have limited visibility into the broader organizational context. A project team focused exclusively on its own deliverable may not see how its work intersects with — or competes against — adjacent initiatives.

Programs: Coordinated Value at Scale

A program is a group of related projects and program activities managed in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits that cannot be achieved by managing them individually. Programs are not simply large projects. They are intentional orchestrations of multiple initiatives designed to produce a coherent organizational outcome.

Programs drive significant organizational change. They connect resources, align projects strategically, and create synergies that amplify the value generated by each individual project. When a hospital system implements a new electronic health records platform, for example, the effort involves multiple projects — infrastructure, clinical training, workflow redesign, patient portal development, and regulatory compliance — that must be coordinated to deliver an integrated healthcare outcome that no single project could achieve alone.

The key differentiator of a program is interdependence. Projects within a program are strategically and operationally connected. Managing them together allows shared learning, coordinated risk management, and optimized resource allocation across the entire initiative.

Portfolios: Strategic Orchestration

At the highest level of the management hierarchy, the portfolio provides a consolidated view of all programs, projects, and operations managed as a group. The portfolio’s purpose is to maximize overall value delivery while achieving strategic objectives, meeting mandatory obligations, and generating sustainable returns.

Portfolio management involves selecting which initiatives to pursue, prioritizing them against strategic criteria, allocating resources across competing demands, and continuously monitoring the portfolio to ensure it remains aligned with organizational strategy as conditions change. This is fundamentally a strategic function — not an operational one.

The portfolio view is also the point at which governance and strategy converge most visibly. Organizational leaders use the portfolio to see how their strategic goals are reflected in the current mix of initiatives, and to make course corrections when the portfolio drifts from its intended direction.

The Competition for Resources and the Need for Coordination

Portfolios, programs, projects, and operations often engage with the same stakeholders and compete for the same resources. Financial budgets, skilled personnel, physical infrastructure, and management attention are all finite — and all in demand simultaneously.

When portfolio, program, and project managers operate in silos — each optimizing for their own objectives without regard for the broader organizational context — the result is resource conflicts, duplicated effort, misaligned priorities, and ultimately, degraded value delivery.

The solution is coordinated governance. By establishing shared decision-making frameworks and clear escalation pathways, organizations can authorize the allocation of human, financial, and physical resources based on expected performance and strategic benefit — rather than on whichever initiative makes the most noise at any given moment.

The portfolio view is not just a management convenience. It is the mechanism by which organizations ensure that every initiative — at every level — is contributing to the same strategic destination.

Operations as the Recipient and Sustainer of Project Value

Operations management plays a unique and often underappreciated role in the broader ecosystem. It is, in many respects, the ultimate customer of project work. When a project team delivers a new capability — a product, a platform, a process — it is operations that inherits that capability and must sustain it over time.

This relationship creates a shared accountability for value realization. A project team that designs a solution without considering operational sustainability is setting up its own work for failure. Operations leaders who resist involvement in project planning are creating the conditions for a difficult handover.

The most effective organizations treat this handover as a deliberate, managed process — not an afterthought. They involve operations teams in project planning from the outset, design solutions with operational sustainability in mind, and formalize knowledge and resource transfers at clearly defined transition points.

Bringing It Together: Why Foundational Elements Matter

The foundational elements outlined in Section 1.3 are not abstract theory. They are the conceptual scaffolding on which every practical project management decision rests. Without them, project managers are navigating by instinct alone — making decisions in isolation, without the benefit of an integrated mental model.

With them, project professionals gain something far more valuable: a coherent framework for understanding how their project fits into the larger organizational picture, why it was authorized, how it is governed, what it is trying to change, and how its success will ultimately be measured.

Consider what changes when a project manager internalizes these foundations:

• They stop treating project governance as administrative overhead and start seeing it as the structure that protects the project’s integrity and legitimacy.
• They stop treating the operations handover as the end of the project and start treating it as the moment where project value is actually realized.
• They stop thinking of their project as an isolated effort and start understanding it as one component in a broader portfolio of strategic investments.
• They stop measuring success by on-time, on-budget delivery and start measuring it by whether the organization reached its desired future state.

These are not small shifts. They are transformational changes in perspective — and they are what separate project managers who execute tasks from project leaders who deliver value.

Projects are temporary. But the value they create — the capabilities they build, the changes they enable, the futures they make possible — endures. Understanding the foundational elements of project management is what enables practitioners to manage that value with intention, precision, and lasting impact.