Category: Application

In physics, a force is said to do work if, when acting, there is a displacement of the point of application in the direction of the force. For example, when a ball is held above the ground and then dropped, the work done on the ball as it falls is equal to the weight of the ball (a force) multiplied by the distance to the ground (a displacement).

Work transfers energy from one place to another, or one form to another.

According to Jammer the term work was introduced in 1826 by the French mathematician Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis as “weight lifted through a height”, which is based on the use of early steam engines to lift buckets of water out of flooded ore mines. According to Dugas, it is to Solomon of Caux “that we owe the term work in the sense that it is used in mechanics now”.

Contemporary business and science treat as a project (or program) any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned (usually by a project team[citation needed]) to achieve a particular aim.
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”.
A project may be a temporary (rather than permanent) social system (work system), possibly constituted by teams (within or across organizations) to accomplish particular tasks under time constraints.
A project may be a part of wider programme management[citation needed] or an ad hoc structure.
Note that open-source software “projects” (for example) may lack defined team-membership, precise planning and time-limited durations.