IT departments must also continually find ways to improve the development process and the resulting systems. The key difference is that projects exist for a specific duration. A project plan documents the milestones and dates that will track completion toward the objective. Processes, on the other hand, are ongoing. They reflect the repetitive nature of business operations and the iterative role of software development.
Processes have objectives and cycle times.
Cycle time is the execution of a process from start to finish. Cost and quality studies focus on cycle-time reduction. IT organizations are facing increasing demand to speed up their development processes while developing better-quality products and services. As technology becomes further ingrained in the business, customers will have more direct access to a company's business systems because those systems will be extended to the Web. Companies are also finding it more difficult to standardize processes across global enterprises as they move toward online IT processes and shared development across divisions and business units.