A question arose recently concerning the relationship between Service Management and Project Management. This is a topic of interest to many people since on the surface both approaches seem to be fighting for some of the same work space in organizations. When we go back to the basic definitions of each we can see that the two are not in conflict, rather are very complementary. However, the relationship may not be as many people expect. I have found that the relationship is one of time: short term bursts of creation activities (outputs) inside a larger ongoing management lifecycle (outcomes). Let us start with the definition of service and service management (according to ITIL ® ): Service : A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks Service management (SM) : A set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services. Both of these de