Organizations commonly speak of, “project management” and “process management”, as if they are interchangeable. In actuality, they are two separate but related approaches. Projects are temporary endeavors undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result – such as launching a product, running a campaign, or implementing a system. Processes are repeatable workflows that support the ongoing execution of business activities – such as hiring new employees, purchasing equipment, or servicing a customer.
The danger comes when companies rely on one and neglect the other. Too much focus on projects without processes leads to inefficiency and inconsistency. Too much reliance on processes without projects leads to rigidity and missed opportunities. This is why modern project management tools are evolving into unified platforms that address both dimensions. Lark exemplifies this shift by connecting project-based work with process-driven workflows, ensuring that neither operates in isolation.
Lark Base: From Projects To Processes In One Framework
Spreadsheets may suffice for small projects, but as organizations grow, they struggle to serve as both project trackers and process managers. Teams lose sight of dependencies, updates lag, and data fragments across versions.
Lark Base provides the structure needed for both. Teams can manage projects in Kanban boards or timelines while simultaneously setting up process-driven workflows in relational tables. For example, a marketing team can manage a one-time campaign alongside an ongoing content approval process within the same platform. Automation further strengthens processes, handling repetitive actions like sending notifications or updating records.
This is where Base reflects the principles of business process management software. It ensures that projects don’t operate without process discipline and that processes remain flexible enough to support project demands. By serving as both project tracker and process engine, Base eliminates the false choice between the two.
Lark Tasks: Clarity For Project Outcomes, Continuity For Processes
Projects demand clear ownership, while processes demand consistency. Without a system to manage both, organizations risk losing accountability in projects and predictability in processes.
Lark Tasks supports both dimensions. For projects, it ensures tasks are assigned with owners, statuses, and deadlines, providing visibility into progress. For processes, recurring tasks can be scheduled and connected to workflows in Base, ensuring routine steps happen without oversight. Remote approvals, follow-ups, and status updates all flow seamlessly into the task view.
By bridging accountability in projects with repeatability in processes, Tasks helps organizations avoid the pitfalls of focusing too narrowly on one side.
Lark Docs And Wiki: Capturing Project Learnings, Building Process Knowledge
Projects generate insights, but without proper documentation, those insights disappear once the project ends. Processes require reference material, but without a central repository, knowledge becomes scattered.
Lark Docs solves both challenges. Teams can co-edit project strategies, reports, and plans in real time, ensuring alignment during execution. When the project ends, those outputs can be refined into reference material for future use. Wiki view organizes this content into a knowledge base, supporting repeatable processes like onboarding, policy updates, and training.
This combination ensures that project knowledge evolves into process knowledge, preventing teams from starting from scratch every time.
Lark Meetings: Aligning One-Time Discussions With Ongoing Workflows
Meetings often focus on projects—discussing deadlines, deliverables, and outcomes. But they also play a role in maintaining processes, ensuring workflows are running smoothly and identifying areas for improvement.
Lark Meetings connects both dimensions. Calls are scheduled in Calendar, hosted in-platform, and supported by AI-generated notes. Transcripts, action items, and highlights are automatically stored in Docs, where they can be linked back to Tasks or Base. This ensures that a project meeting results in actionable follow-ups, while a process review feeds into continuous improvement.
Instead of meetings being disconnected conversations, they become part of a system that serves both immediate project goals and long-term process health.
Lark Calendar: Synchronizing Project Deadlines With Process Cycles
Time is one of the most common areas where projects and processes collide. A product launch (project) may conflict with a quarterly review (process), or a recurring approval workflow may block progress on a time-sensitive deliverable. Without visibility, these conflicts waste energy and delay results.
Lark Calendar brings both views into one place. Deadlines from Tasks and milestones from Base flow directly into shared calendars, while recurring events support process cycles like monthly reports or team check-ins. Teams can see both the one-time commitments of projects and the recurring rhythms of processes, making scheduling more strategic.
This ensures that agility in projects doesn’t undermine consistency in processes—and vice versa.
Lark Messenger: Connecting Project Conversations To Process Updates
Communication is where the gap between projects and processes is often most visible. Chats about immediate project deliverables happen in one space, while updates on recurring workflows are buried somewhere else. This separation creates silos and slows collaboration.
Lark Messenger prevents this by serving as the communication backbone for both. Project discussions can be threaded, pinned, and linked directly to tasks, while process updates can be shared and tracked in the same environment. Critical announcements don’t get lost in unrelated channels, and both project teams and process owners remain aligned.
By keeping communication unified, Messenger ensures that employees don’t need to switch contexts or juggle multiple apps just to stay informed.
Conclusion
The difference between managing projects and managing processes lies not in choosing one over the other but in balancing both. Projects deliver innovation and progress, while processes deliver consistency and reliability. Organizations that fail to connect the two risk either chaos or stagnation.
Lark enables businesses to strike this balance. Base provides a unified framework for both, Tasks ensures accountability and repeatability, Docs and Wiki capture knowledge across cycles, Meetings align discussions with outcomes, Calendar synchronizes time commitments, and Messenger connects communication. Together, these features remove the false divide between projects and processes, helping organizations operate with agility and discipline at once.
For companies looking to extend this alignment further, adopting a CRM app ensures that the same balance between projects and processes also informs customer relationships. Growth becomes not only faster but more sustainable, supported by both innovation and consistency.
