Project management has its own glossary and first-timers, especially those new to project management may find it difficult to blend in without becoming familiar with the project management terms that are often used during their course of work. Every business has its own jargon and project management is no different. In fact, some terms are so common that they can be used in other fields and some terms are very unique.

So, here are 50 select project management terms that will be helpful to communicate and ensure the team members are on the same page.

A. General Project Management Terms:

1.    Status Report

2.    Scope

3.    Project Plan

4.    Requirements

5.    Critical Path Method (CPM)

6.    Project Manager

7.    Project Stakeholder

8.    Project Baseline

9.    Deliverable

10. Project Portfolio Management

11. Agile Project Management

12. Waterfall Model

13. Project Budget

14. Project Timeline

15. Gantt Chart

16. Milestone

17. Dependencies

18. Start-to-start

19. Finish-to-start

20. Start-to-finish

21. Finish-to-finish

22. Work in Progress (WIP)

23. Work in Progress Limit

24. Bottleneck

25. Scrum

26. Sprint

B. Meeting Project Management Terms

27. Kickoff Meeting

28. Meeting Agenda

29. Meeting Minutes

30. Stand-up Meeting

31. Follow Up

C. Resourcing Project Management Terms

32. Resource Allocation

33. Resource Breakdown Structure

34. Resource Leveling

35. Resource Availability

36. Resource Calendar

D. Project Risk Management Terms

 37. Risk

38. Risk Management

39. Risk Mitigation

40. Risk Monitoring and Control

41. Risk Owner

E. Issue Management and Bug Tracking Terms

 42. Issue

43. Issue Management

44. Issue Tracking

45. Issue Log

F. QA Project Management Terms

46. Quality

47. Quality Planning

48. Quality Assurance

49. Quality Control

50. Quality Management Plan

General Project Management Terms

Status Report

Project status reporting is a formal report on the project progress mapped against the project plan. The purpose of the project plan is to communicate with the stakeholders about the project work, budget, resources, issues, and process.

Scope

A project’s scope defines what work must be done as agreed by the client and vendor. It is something that’s mutually agreed upon as a sphere of work.  Scope makes it clear about what work needs to be done to deliver a project. It is a best practice to document well-defined scope and signed-off by the stakeholders so that only the mutually agreed work will be delivered.

Project Plan

A project plan is one of the most significant documents that cover the project scope and objective. A project plan is more than dates and numbers. And it need not be complicated. The project plan captures the project’s tasks, milestones, resources, deadlines, and deliverables. The project plan is used by project managers to be in constant communication with the team and stakeholders.

Requirements

The requirement is a specification of a need. Requirements describe the condition or capabilities of a system. They are the tasks that must be completed to ensure the success of the project.  The requirements must be carefully recorded in a document for the benefit of the team and all stakeholders involved.

Critical Path Method (CPM)

The critical path is the longest sequence of tasks that must be completed on time in order for the project to complete as per the deadline. Critical Path Method determines the shortest time possible to complete the project.  The most critical activities of the project are identified on the critical path. Each task/activity on the critical path cannot be started until its predecessor task or activity is complete. If there is a delay in one of the tasks under the critical path, there will be a delay in the deliverables.

Project Manager

The Project Manager is the person responsible for the end-to-end delivery of a project right from initiation to delivery and implementation. The project manager handles every aspect of the project that includes planning, managing scope, resources, cost, time, infrastructure and all other project-related needs. 

Project Stakeholder

Project stakeholder is any party with an interest – be it direct or indirect, in the successful completion of the project. A stakeholder can be anyone from the project team, executives, sponsors, customers, or the end-users. Stakeholder refers to anyone who is affected by a project. They usually affect or are affected by the project decisions being taken over the course of the project lifecycle.

Project Baseline - The project’s baseline is defined as the original scope, cost and schedule  and used to measure the deviation  from the original plan.

Deliverable - It is the final or finished project or product that meets the expectations of the stakeholder in accordance to the contractual stipulations.

Project Portfolio Management

Project portfolio management (PPM) is the collective management of portfolios and their components. PPM is a series of projects or the collectively managed set of programs and projects. in order to achieve the organizational goals.

Agile Project Management

Agile Project Management is a software development based on an iterative and incremental approach to delivering projects. It draws from agile concepts that focus on teamwork, collaboration, and stakeholder involvement.

Waterfall Model

The waterfall model is a software development life cycle that works on a pattern like a waterfall as the development phases are sequential. The development takes place from one phase to another in a downward fashion. There is no overlapping. Since it is sequential development, it will be difficult to revisit the phases again.

Project Budget

Project Budget is the money or funds allocated for a project. It’s a comprehensive list of financial resources formally approved required to complete a project.

Project Timeline

A project timeline captures all the activities that need to be done over the duration of the project. It creates the framework of the project events according to their occurrence.

Gantt Chart

 A Gantt chart is used to track projects and represented as a horizontal bar chart used in project management. The projects are tracked from start to finish. Gannt Chart is a visualizing tool to track the project schedule and finding out what needs to be done at a particular time period during the project lifecycle.

Milestone

A milestone is a measure of the project’s progress. It indicates a major achievement in the project lifecycle. Milestones help with scheduling and monitoring and indicated symbolically as diamonds.

Dependencies

In a project, there are no tasks or activities that can exist or engage in isolation. In some way or the other, each task becomes an input or output to other tasks. So, there is a reliance on the input or output between activities required to complete the project.  This relationship between the tasks is called Dependency. A dependency is a directional relationship between two activities in such a manner that the start or end of one is dependent on the start or end of the other. Dependencies not only specify the relationship between project activities but also assign the order in which they will be executed.

There are 4 kinds of dependencies:

1. Start-to-start – Predecessor task must start before the Successor can start
2. Finish-to-start – Predecessor must finish before Successor can start
3. Start-to-finish – Predecessor must start before Successor can finish
4. Finish-to-finish – Predecessor must finish before Successor can finish

Work in Progress (WIP)

Work in Progress (WIP) specifies the team’s capacity for the workflow. The tasks engaged by the team at any given point of time during the project are called WIP.

Work in Progress Limit

WIP limit restricts the maximum amount of work that can exist in different stages of a workflow. Limiting work in progress allows teams to identify bottlenecks faster and focus on single work items better.

Bottleneck

A bottleneck hinders the workflow and happens when the workload exceeds the capacity of the system.

Scrum

Scrum is one of the leading and most popular framework used to implement agile. It uses an iterative method for delivery and focuses on prioritizing requirements in achieving the project goals over a short time period called sprints.

Sprint

It is a fixed unit of time required to complete a specific task and its duration is specified by the Scrum Master. The daily standup is conducted during a sprint to assess the progress made towards the sprint goals.

Meeting Project Management Terms

Kickoff Meeting

A kickoff meeting is generally the first meeting that occurs between the project team and their client. The first meeting that takes place between the project team and customer or sponsor is called as the kick-off meeting.

Once the details of the project are finalized, and even before the work has begun, this kick-off meeting happens to review the expectations of the project so that all the stakeholders are on the same page.

Meeting Agenda

It can be a topic or list of topics to be taken up for discussion in a meeting with a description of the topic and its possible outcome.

Meeting Minutes

Meeting minutes is a document all the matters discussed during a meeting. These minutes of the meeting are circulated to all the attendees of the meeting and are a referral source for a call to action and follow-up action for the items discussed.

Stand-up Meeting

A stand-up meeting,  used in the agile environment is also called as daily scrum which is short in duration and conducted as the first activity of the day. The purpose of the stand-up meeting is to get an update about the work progress made by every team member.

Follow Up

A follow-up meeting is directed towards collecting feedback from the participants involved to plan further course of action. Dedicated follow-up meetings are conducted to collect and assess the outcome of the meeting.

Resourcing Project Management Terms

Resource Allocation

Resource allocation involves The assigning and scheduling of resources for a project.  The main objective of resource allocation is to maximize the available resources to achieve the project’s intended goals and objectives.

Resource Breakdown Structure

Resource breakdown structure is a complete and hierarchical list of resources required to complete a project which is classified by type and function.

Resource Leveling

Resource leveling ensures that the resource is not overburdened with tasks. It has an impact on the critical path. Resource leveling is a technique to adjust the project schedule in order to keep the resource below the set limit.

Resource Availability

Resource availability presents the availability of a particular resource at a given point in time during the project. 

Resource Calendar

It indicates all the working and non-working days of the resources assigned or allocated to a project. 

Project Risk Management Terms

Risk

A risk is an uncertain event or condition that has an impact on the project’s objectives. A project risk is something that has not happened but could adversely affect the project outcome if left unattended. A project manager must be able to identify and assess the risks to the project. For instance, all the assumptions made at the start of the project are considered risks. The project manager must manage the risks using risk assessment to anticipate and address the risk to minimize the impact on the project. If risks are unidentified and unaddressed,  it can derail the project or throw it off course. 

Risk Management

Risk management deals with the identification and assessment of risks to reduce the likelihood of occurrence of the negative risk and its impact. Effective Risk Management ensures negative risks do not affect the project goals.

Risk Mitigation

A strategy devised to decrease the frequency or probability of the occurrence of negative risks and focuses on a risk mitigation strategy to protect from the negative risks’ threat to the project’s objectives.

Risk Monitoring and Control

Risk monitoring and control process identifies risks using a risk management plan and  tracks the  performance of the risk responses implemented

Risk Owner

Risk Owner is primarily responsible for managing the risk and also mitigate the risk by implementing suitable strategies. The risk owner is also required to be involved in performing qualitative and quantitative risk analysis.

Issue Management and Bug Tracking Terms

Issue

A project issue is a problem that has been encountered which has negative consequences for a project. Issues are like risks but the difference lies in the fact that issues have already happened, while risks are threats that have not taken place. Poor issue management can have a serious impact that can impair or result in project failure. An issue register or issue log is used to track issues.

Issue Management

Issue Management is the process of effectively detecting, resolving and tracking of the issues related to the project. The main purpose of issue management is resolving the issues before they get blown into catastrophes.

Issue Tracking

Issue tracking is the identification of error or bug that affects the performance of the project or product. The best practice is to use an Issue Tracker to keep track and closely monitor the issues.

Issue Log

Issue Log is a compilation of all the Project issues and the persons accountable to resolve. The Issue log includes the issue status, resolution plan and deadlines for the resolution or fixes.

QA Project Management Terms

Quality – The quality of a project is a measure of the excellence of a product or project ‘s deliverables. Simply stated, Quality is must meet the expectations of the customer or stakeholder.  Project Quality management, quality control, and project quality assurance are the three processes critical to Quality.

Quality Planning

The expected quality standards are identified in Quality planning and mechanisms created to ensure the standards are satisfied. Quality planning prescribes corrective action in case of deviation from the set quality standards.

Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance is a set of practices created to monitor processes in the project to ensure the quality requirements are satisfied. Quality Assurances necessitates regular quality audits and conducted throughout the project.

Quality Control

Quality control is the application of the best practices in the evaluation of the project or product that meets the desired quality level. This process is performed after the creation of the project in order to detect any changes required for quality assurance.

Quality Management Plan

A quality management plan is a detailed plan consisting of stakeholders’ quality expectations, quality assurance, and quality control policies to successfully execute a project. This plan is usually a part of the project management plan.
 
 

This project management concept compilation is not complete and highlights the most popular and commonly used. We will connect in another blog with another expansive list that will prove beneficial to you in building your project management terms vocabulary.

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