Founding Definition of Work Management™

What Is Work Management?

Work Management is the discipline of clarifying, coordinating, and completing work in a predictable, effective, and sustainable way across an organization.

This definition establishes Work Management as a distinct professional discipline, separate from but complementary to project management, operations management, and agile delivery.

Work Management focuses not on what work is being done, but on how work flows, is owned, and is completed across people, teams, systems, and time.

Founding Statement

This page records the founding definition of Work Management as a formal discipline.

While organizations have long attempted to improve productivity through tools, methodologies, and management structures, the discipline of Work Management emerges in response to a modern reality:

Work has become continuous, cross-functional, and increasingly augmented by AI — yet most organizations still manage it as if it were isolated, linear, and manually coordinated.

Work Management exists to close that gap.

Why Work Management Is a Discipline

A professional discipline is defined by a shared body of knowledge, principles, practices, and outcomes.

Work Management qualifies as a discipline because it includes:

• A formal definition with a clear scope and purpose

• Core principles that guide decision-making and design of work systems

• Frameworks and models for structuring, prioritizing, coordinating, and completing work

• Repeatable practices that produce predictable outcomes across organizations

• Professional roles and competencies that can be taught, evaluated, and certified

These elements collectively form the Work Management Body of Knowledge (WMBOK™).

The Scope of Work Management

Work Management governs how work moves through an organization, including:

• Work intake and demand shaping

• Prioritization and sequencing

• Ownership and accountability

• Capacity and workload balancing

• Cross-functional coordination

• Visibility and progress tracking

• Completion, learning, and continuous improvement

It applies to knowledge work, operational work, creative work, and AI-assisted work across industries.

What Work Management Is — and Is Not

Work Management Is

• A discipline focused on the system of work

• Concerned with flow, clarity, coordination, and completion

• Tool-agnostic and methodology-agnostic

• Applicable at team, department, and enterprise levels

Work Management Is Not

• A project management methodology

• A task list or productivity hack

• A software category

• A replacement for leadership or strategy

Relationship to Other Disciplines

Work Management complements — but is not subordinate to — other management disciplines:

• Project Management focuses on temporary initiatives

• Operations Management focuses on efficiency of ongoing processes

• Agile Frameworks focus on iterative delivery within teams

Work Management focuses on the connective tissue between them — ensuring work is clearly defined, coordinated, and completed across boundaries.

Foundational Principles of Work Management

The discipline of Work Management is guided by principles including:

• Clarity over chaos

• Systems over silos

• Flow over friction

• Visibility over assumption

• Intelligence over intuition

• Progress over perfection

• Humanity over metrics

These principles shape how work systems are designed and governed.

Origin and Precedence

The formalization of Work Management as a discipline reflects the convergence of:

• Increasing complexity of cross-functional work

• The rise of AI as an active participant in work execution

• The limitations of tool-centric and project-centric approaches

This definition and framework are established to provide clarity, continuity, and a common language as organizations adapt to the future of work.

Stewardship of the Discipline

The Work Management Institute (WMI) serves as the steward of the Work Management discipline, responsible for:

• Maintaining and evolving the Work Management Body of Knowledge WMBOK™

• Establishing professional standards and certifications

• Advancing research and education

• Supporting practitioners and organizations worldwide

Citation and Usage

This founding definition may be cited, referenced, and adapted with attribution.

Canonical citation:

Work Management Institute. “Founding Definition of Work Management.” work.management. 2025.