Project management

top down budgeting

A budget planning strategy where cost estimates are generated by working from the highest level downwards. A cost is typically put on each unit of materials, labour or services required for the project. The estimated number of units is then converted into a monetary sum to get the overall cost estimate.

Project phases

A collection of logically related project activities that culminates in the completion of one or more deliverable. these phases can be referred to as the project life cycle. "The series of phases that a project passes through from its initiation to its closure". Intitiation process, planning process, executing process and closing process.

Committed costs

A committed cost is an investment that a business entity has already made and cannot recover by any means, as well as obligations already made that the business cannot get out of

Activity

A distinct, scheduled portion of work performed during the course of a project. A activity is decomposed from the WBS work package when developing the schedule network diagram

Project charter

A document issued by the project initiator or sponsor that formally authorises the existence of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organisational resources to project activites

WBS dictionary

A document that provides detailed deliverable, activity and scheduling information about each component in the work breakdown structure.

Quality tool: cause and effect diagram

A fishbone diagram is a tool that can help you perform a cause and effect analysis for a problem you are trying to solve. this type of analysis enables you to discover the root cause of a problem.

Gantt Chart

A gantt chart is a chart and scheduling tool to show the time of each activities as horizontal bar. the length of the bar is proportional to the duration of the activity

Program

A group of related projects, subprograms and program activities managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them

WBS

A hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be carried out by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables.

statement of work (SOW)

A narrative description of products, services or results to be delivered by the project.

Quality tools - pareto diagram

A pareto diagram is a bar graph, the lengths of the bars represent frequency or cost (time or money) and are arranged with the longest bars to the left and the shortest to the right. In this way, the chart visually depicts which situations are more significant

Customer

A person who buys or benefits from the product, service or result produced from a project. a customer can also be considered the sponsor of a project.

stakeholder

A person, group or organization that has interest or concern in the project. PMBOK Definition: " An Individual, group, or organization who may effect, be affected by, or perceive itself it be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project".

Project risk

A risk is an uncertain even or condition that, if it occurs has a positive or negative effect on the project objectives.

Fast tracking

A schedule compression technique in which activities or phases normally done in sequence are performed in parallel for atleast a portion of their duration. Doing many things at once.

Program evaluation and review technique (PERT)

A technique for estimating that applies a weighted average of optimistic, pessimistic and most likely estimates when there is uncertainty with the individual activity estimates.

Analogous estimating

A technique for estimating the duration or cost of an activity or a project using historical data from a similar activity or project

Decomposition

A technique used for dividing and subdividing the project cope and project deliverables into smaller, more manageable parts.

Project

A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result

Earned value

An approach where you monitor the project plan, actual work, and work completed value to see if a project is on track. Earned value shows how much of the budget and time should have been spent with regard to the amount of work done so fat. the measure of work performed expressed in terms of the budget authorised for that work.

swot analysis

Analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of an organization, project or option.

Deliverable

Any unique and verifiable product, result or capability to perform a service that is required to be produced to complete a process, phase or project

Bottom-up estimating

Bottom up estimating is approximating the size and risk of a project by breaking it down into its smallest work components, estimating the effort, duration and cost of each then aggregating them into a full estimate.

triple constraint

Consideration of the projects baselines and the limiting factors that these need to be managed within. Triple constraint will generally be depicted as a triangle with SCOPE, TIME & COST on the corners and QUALITY being what can be compromised in the middle.

Cost estimate

Cost estimate is the approximation of the cost of a project. Techniques applied can be top down (high level) or bottom up (defined at work package level).

Overhead costs

Costs for products and services for your project that are difficult to subdivide and allocate directly.

Risk response - avoid

Developing an alternative strategy that has a higher probability of success

Risk management - enhancing

Enhancing is about increasing the probability of the occurrence of positive risks. Here, you take measures to increase the chance of the event happening, but there will be no assurance of realizing this opportunity.

Risk response - exploit

Exploiting is about doing everything to make sure the event happens. In this risk response strategy you will make sure that the opportunity is realized. Here, you take the opportunity very seriously and develop a strategy to realize it. Simply put, in exploit risk response strategy, you increase the chance of happening the event to 100%.

Quality tool - Control charts

If analysis of the control chart indicates that the process is currently under control, then no corrections or changes to process control parameters are needed or desired. in addition, data from the process can be used to predict the future performance of the process. if the chart indicates that the monitored process is not in control, analysis of the chart can help determine the sources of variation as this will result in degraded process performance. a process that is stable but operating outside of desired limits needs to be improved through a deliberate effort to understand the causes of current performance and fundamentally improve the process

Indirect costs

Indirect costs generally represent overhead costs, such as supervision, administration, consultants and interest. Indirect costs cannot be associated with any particular work package or activity, hence the term. indirect costs vary directly with time.

Project management

Management of a project through planning, organising, motivating and controlling resources and procedures to reach a specific goal.

Risk management - transfer

One effective way to deal with a risk is to pay someone else to accept it for you. The most common way to do this is to buy insurance.

Quality tools - histogram

One of the seven basic quality tools displayed in a graph illustrating the frequency and the extent in the context of two variables. it is used to analyse process data for making quality management decisions. if its normal, the graph takes the shape of a bell curve. if its not it may take different shapes based on the condition of the distribution.

sponsor

Person or group with the authority to assign resources and enforce decisions regarding the project. Is accountable for enabling success.

rolling wave planning

Planning a project based on initial information. Repeating the planning process as the project develops and more information is clear and available.

Project governance

Project governance is the management framework within which project decisions are made and ensures the project is aligned with the organisations strategic objectives and priorities

Portfolio

Project portfolio is a term that refers to an organisations group of projects and the process in which they are selected and managed. The project portfolio is strategically selected to advance the corporations organisational goals

contingency

Refers to costs that will probably occur based on past experience but with some uncertainty regarding the amount. typically estimated using statistical analysis or judgement based on past asset or project experience and identified when completing risk analysis. contingency reserve is budget within the cost baseline that is allocated for identified risks that are accepted and for which contingent or mitigation responses are developed.

Risk

Risk is defined by potential external events that will have a positive or negative impact on your project if they occur. Risk refers to the combination of the probability the event will occur and the impact on the project if the event occurs. If the combination of the probability of the occurrence and the impact on the project is too high, you should identify the potential event as a risk and put a proactive plan in place to manage the risk

risk - sharing

Risk sharing involves partnering with others to share responsibility for the risky activities. Many organizations that work on international projects will reduce political, legal, labor, and others risk types associated with international projects by developing a joint venture with a company located in that country.

Milestone

Significant point or event to mark project progression

vender bid analysis

The Vendor Bid Analysis is a technique used when working with suppliers on uncertain activities. The analysis considers the assumptions the vendor worked with and does a sensitivity assessment on those assumptions. In addition, for effort that the buying organization does not have experience with, they can contract with a consulting firm that has experience to do a "Should Cost" analysis. This "Should Cost" estimate is compared to the suppliers quote to identify any shortcomings. The advantages of this technique is that it exposes supplier risk that can be accounted for in the reserve analysis and it increases the confidence in the supplier's approach. The disadvantages are that this can take a fair amount of time and if a consultant is used to create a "Should Cost" it adds to the cost of the project.

Gold plating

The act of giving the customer more than what they originally asked for.

Planned value

The authorised budget assigned to scheduled work

Quality

The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements

Project life cycle

The logical path a project takes from the beginning to its end. Project life cycle is distinguished by four major phases, which are initiation, planning, implementation and closure.

Funding limit reconciliation

The process of comparing the planned expenditure of project funds against any limits on the commitment of funds for the project to identify any variances between the funding limits and the planned expenditures. This can often be depicted in the S curve graph

Actual cost

The realised cost incurred for the work performed on an activity during a specific time

scope creep

The uncontrolled expansion to a product or project scope without adjustments to time, cost and resources.

Work package

The work defined at the lowest level of the work breakdown structure for which cost and duration can be estimated and managed

s curve

They allow the progress of a project to be tracked visually over time, and form a historical record of what has happened to date. Analyses of S-curves allow project managers to quickly identify project growth, slippage, and potential problems that could adversely impact the project if no remedial action is taken.

scope

What the project is trying to achieve. It entails all the work involved in delivering the project outcomes and the processes used to produce them. It is the reason and the purpose of the project.

schedule

a listing of a project's milestones, activities, and deliverables, usually with intended start and finish dates. Those items are often estimated in terms of resource allocation, budget and duration, linked by dependencies and scheduled events.

Earned value management

a method that combines scope, schedule and resource measurements to assess priject performance and progress. The components that are applied are earned value (EV), planned value (PV) and actual cost (AC)

communication channels

a project manager should consider the number of potential communication channels or paths as an indicator of the complexity of the projects communication requirements.

Critical chain

a schedule method that modified the schedule network diagram to account for limited resources and resource constraints. this is applied following the critical path method once the maximum duration of the project schedule has been defined.

Crashing (Schedule)

a technique used to shorten the schedule duration for the least incremental cost by adding resources. an example of crashing is adding resources to the critical path tasks.

Progressive elaboration

in the course of a project the plan gets modified, detailed and improved as more information becomes available. An iteratvie and continuous improvement process which adds more information

constraints

on any project, you will have a number of project constraints that are competing for your attention. Constraints include scope, risk, time, quality, cost and resource.

Resources

resources are required to carry out the project tasks. they can be people, equipment, facilities, funding or anything else capable of definition (usually other than labour) required for the completion of a project activity resources are generally catergoried as: - people - materials - equipment

Baseline

the approved version of a work product that can be changed only through formal change control procedures and is used as a basis for comparison. Within the project we refer to the following baselines: scope, time and cost.

Quality tools/Check Sheets

the process of collecting data about quality problems and ensuring quality requirements have been met

Critical path

the sequence of activities that represents the longest path through a project which determines the shortest possible duration.

risk response - mitigate

to reduce the severity of a risk that cannot be avoided