There is a discussion topic in many firms about "what is a project and what is support." One place to look for some advice is
- The Curse of Earned Value Management...Level of Effort, Quentin Fleming and Joel Koppelman, The Measurable News, June 2002.
Once management and especially project managers come to realize that the definition of a Project as given in PMBOK and the like is actually too narrow. These definitions assume there is a finite duration, specific deliverables, and a start and end. This is a very useful definition of a project - a Discrete Project. But it limits the management of effort in any modern firm - especially in IT.
If we define ALL work within a project context, then we can start to connect this effort to budget, value, performance, portfolio management and the like. No leaking of effort into a Level of Effort domain where it can hide, be disconnected from strategy, and basically become a cost sink that builds over time until someone asks "what the heck are all those people on the 3rd floor doing?"
Try this idea out, forget all the technical definitions, scrape all efforts into a "project" paradigm, with listed tasks, signed budget and resources and most important defined performance measures.
