One of the most important organizational developments in recent years has been the significant growth in project work across different sectors and industries. Academic research confirms this development and recent industry reports also highlight the growing importance of project, programme and portfolio management practices to organizations. Moreover, whilst different industry surveys continue to highlight the familiar problems of product quality, missed deadlines and budget overruns, the same surveys also highlight the need for a more strategic approach towards the management of projects and a greater focus on the value and benefits that projects and programmes contribute to organizations. Within the project management literature however, the product creation view of projects still prevails and there is now a need to augment this view with other relevant perspectives linked to the developing world of 21st century projects. Against this background, this paper presents a new perspective on projects and programmes as value creation processes, a much broader perspective than the classical view of temporary production. Based on the work of the late Richard Normann, the core ideas are presented in the form of a conceptual framework and these are then illustrated in relation to recent practice within a large integrated food group in the UK. A number of conclusions are then drawn including some practical suggestions on how the framework might be used in practice.