Services - Glossary of Common Project Management Terms
PMP � Project Management Professional
Holders of the PMP credential through the Project Management Institute (PMI) have a combination of education and experience that allows them to balance the science of the methodology with the art of people and risk management. In order to obtain the credential the project manager needs to have completed 3 to 5 years of project experience and passed an exam consisting of 200 questions covering the 9 knowledge areas.
Commonly Used Terms
Charter
This document captures the scope, deliverables, schedule, quality and budget for the project. The document is started in the initiation phase with a scope statement, and is signed off at the end of the planning process. When changes are made to the scope, schedule, budget, or quality the project manager will document them separately as change requests and decision documents.
Scope
This sets the boundaries of what the project will and will not accomplish. It is important to ensure the scope statement is sufficiently clear to allow the project manager and team to develop a schedule of activities. In the scope statement you include in scope, what you will do, and out of scope, what is not expected.
Risk
This is something that might happen during the project. The project manager and project team will work through a process of identifying potential risks and developing strategies during the planning phase, and during the execution phase.
Risk Management
The project manager and team will develop strategies to deal with the risks identified. These strategies will be; mitigate, lessen the impact as much as possible; avoid, take actions that prevent the risk occurring; transfer, purchase insurance or other actions that move the risk off the project; accept, when you can�t do anything else you take the risk and work through it; exploit, some risks can be opportunities, you will take actions to ensure they occur.
Deliverables
Actual outcomes, a document, product or completed step
Issue
Often confused with risks, an issue is something that actually happens. It may be a change, a delay, or a risk that occurs.
Change management
Changes to the plan or charter. The includes new or reduced scope, changes to delivery dates, changes to quality standards, anything that will have an impact on the scope, quality, cost, end date of the project. The project manager will work with the team to develop options and recommendations for a decision.
Status report
A periodic report on the status of the project schedule, budget, resource usage, deliverables. This is often reported as red, green, or yellow status.
Project Plan
Often people think of the project plan as the schedule of activities. The project plan includes both static and living documents; the charter, the schedule, risk management, communications, change management, lessons learned, prototypes, models, estimates, work breakdown structure, etc.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
This is a graphical representation of activities of the project, it looks like an organizational chart. The WBS can be created with sticky notes, software programs, or on project planning. The important outcome is that everything on the scope statement is captures as a work package. Often this leads to scope changes, which will be incorporated into the charter document.
Work Package
This is a bundle of activities that represents a box on the WBS. Some organizations have clear definitions of what comprises a work package, specific number of hours effort, ends with a deliverable, etc. The work package is a package of activities that has a clear owner and a duration that allows the project manager to control the risk. A project of three months will need work packages of days duration, a project of a year will have work packages of weeks or months. Often work packages in a project will have varying durations depending on their relationship to the critical path.
Effort
This is the amount of work it will take to complete the task, all the task durations add up to work packages and eventually a schedule. The way to think about effort is, if you had nothing else to do, and everyone and everything you needed was at hand, how long would it take to complete the task.
Duration
This is the actual time that passes from the beginning to the completion of the task. A task that had 1 day�s effort may have 1 week of duration due to days off, other tasks, meetings, other projects, and anything else that gets in the way of working on the project.
Critical path
The schedule will have work packages that follow immediately after one another. A delay in one will directly result in a delay to the completion date.
Project Management Lifecycle
Initiate:
In this phase, the project is officially kicked off. The business case is used to develop a scope statement and the project team is identified and assigned. At this stage there will often be a preliminary budget and schedule identified. The information developed at this stage will be used in the planning phase to complete the project plan.
Plan:
In this phase, the budget, schedule, and key deliverables are finalized and any changes become part of the change management process. The team develops a Work Breakdown Structure and uses that to estimate the cost and duration of the project. The schedule is created from that information and the charter is complete.
Execute, monitor and control:
These three phases are often listed separately. During the execution of the project plan, the project manager and team will work through the activities developed in the planning phase. While executing things happen, risks arise, changes affect the schedule, budget and scope, changes are recommended and decisions are made.
Close:
Often the least favourite process, this is where the project manager reviews the project plan, including authorized changes, and works with the sponsor and the operational teams to formally sign off the project. This stage often includes providing performance feedback to the team, collecting and publishing lessons learned, and celebrating the end of the project.
Project Management Knowledge Areas
Integrated Project Management:
The knowledge and processes that project managers use throughout the project to bring together the skills of the other knowledge areas into a successful project plan.
Scope Project Management:
The knowledge and tools that project managers use to develop the original scope then manage scope throughout the execution and closure of the project.
Time Project Management:
All the tools and techniques used by the project manager and project team to estimate and manage to a schedule.
Cost Project Management:
The processes, tools and techniques that the project managers use to estimate, manage and control costs.
Quality Project Management:
The tools and knowledge required to develop, and manage to, quality standards. These standards can be based on concrete measurements, observational or anecdotal evidence, or a combination of both.
Human Resource Project Management:
The tools and skills needed to identify and manage the project team needed to deliver a successful outcome for the project.
Communications Project Management:
The tools and techniques used to develop the project communications. This includes status reporting, meetings, newsletters, updates, and presentations.
Risk Project Management:
The tools and skills the project manager uses with the project team to identify potential risks and develop mitigation plans to be executed should the risk arise.
Procurement Project Management:
The tools and knowledge used by the project manager, and possibly the internal procurement team, to manage purchases and contracts related to the project, from identification of the need, through the development and signing of contracts, through contract closure.