Understanding that Processes and Projects are not the same thing

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the differences between processes and projects. There is still much confusion in people's minds about the characteristics and purposes of one or the other. Ricardo seeks to remedy this confusion by bringing a few examples that illustrate each case.

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Episode transcript

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Speaker 1 (4s): Hello everybody welcome to the five Minutes PM podcast today. I like to discuss with you the difference between Processes and Projects a lot of people think, Oh, this is easy. I know the concept of Projects. So I knew what is a project and it's not so simple. A lot of people are mixing up this two concepts. So they come from industrial engineer, like my master, for example, and they say, Oh, I wanted to do to treat the project as a process. And Nope, let's, let's go back to the basic and let's understand the main difference between these two.

It's not, not just the letters. First thing we need to understand Projects is something temporary. What do we start thinking in the day we'll be finished. Process is permanent. It's permanent, or you run a process until you want the process at that job. So if one of the process to run for one year that's okay. Two years that's okay. 10 years. That's OK for whatever that's okay. So process its something related to the routines project.

It's not project. It's something that you start to have. The end of the second thing is the Valley production. Let me explain this better. When you have a process, the Valley of the process, you can see every day, every time you run the process, you see and collect the results in a project environment. It's not simple like that because most of the benefit we'll be perceived only, and only at the end or in the very close stage.

Very close to the end. So let me give you an example to make it very easy for you to understand let's suppose that you work in a company, okay? And you receive your monthly salary or weekly salary. Every day you go to your office, you work, you leave your office in every end of the month, you receive your salary. This is for you, a process, okay? You can continue There until the time you want or in Today the time you're a company wants you to work for them.

And then at night you decided to do an MBA course a two year MBA course. What is the MBA course for you? The MBA course, it's not necessarily producing Valli to you every single day or every single month, but you believe when you decided to do this project, this MBA project, that in two years, you will increase your knowledge, your network and everything. And then you we'll be able to find another job to get a promotion or to increase your Valley.

So project is something that you aim to increase the fee or value in the future. Processes is something that you are aiming to produce currently. So this is how you need to understand. So Processes at the things that you do everyday every week and Projects are things that you do thinking on the future. And she is and how I can, okay. I'm making a hundred dollars per day to day.

How I can make 120. OK. If I pick better English or if I speak Chinese or if I know it or whatever. So this art, the project you need to implement in order to increase the value of your process. So this too are the main differences. So we need to understand this. Otherwise we'll be saying the wrong thing and we will be trying to use freaks that are process related to Projects or project related to process.

We need to understand, look, if a new process is a project runway, the process is not the project. So let's suppose create and develop a new payroll system for your company. This is a project we start to finish. You have a target than you want to increase that in the future, but drowned the payment every month each or not a project, because it's an endless process. You will be doing this every month until the day you went.

There is no nothing, a specific end date. So this is the way we need to do. Understanding differentiate this two concepts, sorry for being too basic for some of you. But this is a key concept that people that are not aware, a lot of what project management is the need to notice. Otherwise they we'll be making an, using the wrong tools to solve their problems. Okay. I hope you enjoy this podcast and to see you next week with another five minutes BM Podcast.

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Understanding that Processes and Projects are not the same thing

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