A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal.[1]
An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of events: a "set of interrelated tasks to be executed over a fixed period and within certain cost and other limitations".[2]
A project may be a temporary (rather than a permanent) social system (work system), possibly staffed by teams (within or across organizations) to accomplish particular tasks under time constraints.[3]: Section 1.2 [4]
A project may form a part of wider programme management[5]: 1 or function as an ad hoc system.[6]: 922
Open-source software "projects" or artists' musical "projects" (for example) may lack defined team-membership, precise planning and/or time-limited durations.
The word project comes from the Latin word projectum from the Latin verb proicere, "before an action", which in turn comes from pro-, which denotes precedence, something that comes before something else in time (paralleling the Greek πρό) and iacere, "to do". The word "project" thus originally meant "before an action".