Operations, corporate and project-related uncertainty

To put projects and project management in context it is useful to consider the overall task of managing organizations in terms of three basic aspects:

• operations management – managing for ‘business as usual’;
• corporate management – deciding what changes to make at a corporate strategy level, providing appropriate resources and corporate capability, and ensuring appropriate governance;
• project management – designing and creating specific changes or assets.

In common with other ways of characterizing the task of managing, these three aspects should be seen as intimately related – not as separate ‘silos’. Corporate management decisions are influenced by current and desired future operational capability; project management is driven by corporate decisions; and future operations are facilitated by project management that maintains or enhances operational capability. All three aspects involve uncertainty and associated challenges of complexity and novelty. In particular, all three aspects are influenced and affected in related ways by the wider environmental conditions prevailing, and by perceptions about the future operating environment.