How to decide if your work is a project

Welcome to Success Factors Discovery, your weekly email connecting you to moments of inspiration. Enjoy delivering highly successful projects.
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This week: Why most struggle with this question, and what you can do about it.

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A Quick Story From a Managing Director

Last week, I asked a Managing Director of a medium‑sized business to complete a project Complexity Assessment.

• His initiative scored just one point under the formal definition of a project.
• But he insisted it was important, and to run it as a project.
• This wasn’t a one‑off.

Internal change and innovation projects often score low on complexity, but still need a project approach.

That gap in the tools inspired me to dig deeper.

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Background / context

After reviewing guidance from good practice sources like the APM, PMI and others, I found little practical advice for making this distinction.

The question being, when to manage work as a Project, or Business as Usual (BAU).
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So I created a decision tree and scoring system to help individuals and teams decide.

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The solution

Instead of asking “Is this a project?”, a better question is:
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To start, check these three yes/no triggers:

If yes to any of these questions, it's probably a project.

If all three are “no,” use the complexity calculator to decide whether it’s micro, small, medium or larger.

This next tool will help you choose between a light‑touch approach or a formal project structure. Use the scoring tool to rate seven criteria from 0 to 5:

Add up the scores:

• Micro – 0 to 9 – Routine, repeatable work. Treat as BAU or individual improvement. Formal project structure may not be needed.
• Small – 10 to 14– Minor change. Use a light-touch approach. Likely a project.
• Medium – 15 to 21– Cross-team or somewhat novel change. Treat as a project.
• Large – 22 to 28 – Significant change with broader impact. Treat as a project.
• Mega – 29 to 35 - Very significant. Treat as a project.

📆 Tuesday Action

Save these three trigger questions in your notes. Next time you’re asked to deliver a change, idea or goal, run through them before you decide how to manage it.

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Looking for more?

• ​Check out my recent Linkedin article →​
• Or, hit reply with "Interested" or similar. I will share a new the playbook and tool on this. I'll simply ask for your feedback.

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See you next week.

Greg

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You won't regret using this guide to and readiness assessments to level up your projects.