3.12. Key Terms
Key Terms
- Analogous estimate: estimate based on costs of similar projects.
- Business Case/Proposal: Document created to define the problem or opportunity in detail and identify a preferred solution for implementation, generally created in the Initiation phase.
- Deliverable: what is delivered as the finished product of a project – usually a noun
- Direct Cost: An expense that can be traced directly to (or identified with) a specific cost center or cost objects such as a department, process, or product.
- Direct Project Overhead Costs: Costs that are directly tied to specific resources in the organization that is being used in the project. Examples include the cost of lighting, heating, and cleaning the space where the project team works.
- Functional Requirements: The characteristics of the final deliverable in ordinary, non-technical language. What you want the deliverable to do.
- Gantt Chart: A type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule.
- General and Administrative (G&A) Overhead Costs: The indirect costs of running a business, such as IT support, accounting, and marketing.
- Milestones: another name for deadlines
- Non-functional Requirements: Criteria that can be used to judge the final product or services that your project delivers.
- Planning: The act or process of making a plan to achieve or do something.
- Planning Phase: When the project plans are documented, the project deliverables and requirements are defined, and the project schedule is created. It involves creating a set of plans to help guide your team through the implementation and closure phases of the project.
- Project Charter: A statement of the scope, objectives, and participants in a project.
- Project Management: Has a dual nature; it is both a series of distinct phases with a clear beginning and end and a continuous, circular process in which each end leads to a new beginning.
- Scope Creep: Change in the scope of a project that goes unmanaged. It is common in projects that have lots of stakeholders with differing goals.
- Scope Evolution: Changes that all stakeholders agree on and that are accompanied by corresponding changes in budget and schedule. It is a natural result of the kind of learning that goes on as a project unfolds.
- Scope Statement: Document that defines the project’s scope. It is generally developed during the Initiation phase.
- SMART: Acronym for Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-Related. This is typically used to describe criteria for setting attainable goals in a project.
- Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): Hierarchical outline of all the deliverables involved in completing a project. The WBS is part of a project scope statement. The creation of a WBS is one of the first steps in organizing and scheduling the work for a project.
- Work Packages: tasks assigned to team members or contractors to create the deliverables. They are action-oriented and described with verbs.
“5.8. Key Terms” & “6.8. Key Terms” & “8.7. Key Terms” from Essentials of Project Management by Adam Farag is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Modifications: Changes to the terms activity, communications management, contingency plan, gantt chart, network diagram, resource management and single point estimation. Removed: bottom-up, cost of quality, determination of resource costs, reserve analysis, vendor bid analysis,
