A project in business and science is a collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim.
The word project comes from the Latin word projectum from the Latin verb proicere, "to throw something forwards" which in turn comes from pro-, which denotes something that precedes the action of the next part of the word in time (paralleling the Greek ???) and iacere, "to throw". The word "project" thus actually originally meant "something that comes before anything else happens".
When the English language initially adopted the word, it referred to a plan of something, not to the act of actually carrying this plan out. Something performed in accordance with a project became known as an "object".

Project management

In project management a project consists of a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.Another definition is a management environment that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified business case.
Project objectives define target status at the end of the project, reaching of which is considered necessary for the achievement of planned benefits. They can be formulated as S.M.A.R.T: Specific, Measurable (or at least evaluable) achievement, Achievable (recently Acceptable is used regularly as well), realistic (given the current state of organizational resources) and Time terminated (bounded). The evaluation (measurement) occurs at the project closure. However a continuous guard on the project progress should be kept by monitoring and evaluating. It is also worth noting that SMART is best applied for incremental type innovation projects. For radical type projects it does not apply as well. Goals for such projects tend to be broad, qualitative, stretch/unrealistic and success driven.