--Is a small effort a project?--

One of my students recently asked if creating something for her office, by herself (a one-person team), was a project. Of course I said yes.

How can a one-person effort be a project? Well a project is any effort that has a defined start, a defined end (or deadline), a defined goal, and has resources involved. Remember that resources are anything that help you finish a task: people, machines, money, permits, etc.

Even when working on something yourself, you usually have to give some type of status or report how close to finished you are. You can't really tell how close to finish you are without some type of plan. In order to do a plan, you have to clearly define the goal.

So I would argue that any effort where you:

1. Clearly define the goal (and perhaps what the goal *is not*)
2. Plan your work (to-do list, steps, major deliverables)
3. Manage that work to meet expectations (budget, deadline, quality standards)

...is a project!