Hari Ram Narayanan said that project managers today work in a constantly changing environment that requires them to categorize tasks in a way that it makes it easier to manage them. He recommended the “work insights framework” that classifies all work into four fundamental types.

First the project manager must answer a question – what is the problem, the set of requirements, or the desire to be fulfilled? And the answer is the way it is to be achieved – the work to be done, the plan, and its execution.

However, when a project manager undertakes a task, he or she does not always have both the question and the answer. For example, when a detective begins an investigation, the question is known, but the answer is not.

Similarly, there are the following four possibilities that form the four fundamental types of work : routine work with known question and known answer, ritual work with unknown question and known answer, investigative work with known question and unknown answer and exploration work with unknown question and unknown answer. With the work insights matrix, the project manager has a helpful tool to easily visualize the four types of work involved in a project and plan better.