Becoming a project management professional:
Well done! You’ve reached the end of the Project management module! We hope you are already feeling more comfortable with project management and continue to build your skills and confidence.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Assumption: | Made about a project based on the available knowledge and are typically made during the initiation and planning phase. Often necessary to enable successful planning of the project but add risk to the project’s success. |
| Close-Out: | A process that finalizes all deliverables associated with the project. Includes communicating and reflecting with your team, going through any final tasks, creating documentation, and preparing documentation for storage. |
| The critical path: | The activities that define the shortest time the project can possibly be completed in. |
| Deliverables: | Something to be provided, especially as a product of a development process (e.g., Thesis introduction section, An abstract for a conference, your part of a group project). Also known as the smaller project goals/tasks. |
| Duration: | The entire time taken to complete a task, including time where work is not actively being completed (i.e., passive time). Duration stretches from the moment the task or project begins to the moment that it ends. Considering the experiment example above, while the effort is only 18 hours, the duration for this task would be 3 days or 72 hours. |
| Effort: | The amount of work or the time it takes to complete a task. For example, if it takes 6 hours a day for 3 days to complete the data collection for a specific experiment the effort required is 6×3 = 18 hours. |
| Proactive project management: | Answers critical questions about the project to reduce associated risks in order to help it succeed. It anticipates problems and projects before they occur and is most effective for long-term planning. |
| Progressive elaboration project: | A type of project where details are added to the plan as they become available. |
| Project: | A series of goals consisting of tasks which have a definitive beginning and end. Typically planned to achieve an overarching goal. |
| Project management: | The practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time. |
| Project scope: | Encompasses all project requirements. Anything that is not defined as part of the project and is not related to the project’s success is defined as out-of-scope. |
| Project scope planning: | Defines all of the work of the project and only the work that is needed to successfully meet the project’s objectives. |
| Reactive project management: | Used to react to problems as they arise. Successful in situations where crisis management is required. e.g., Emergencies. |
| Risk: | Any uncertain event that may occur that could impact a project’s success. |
| Rolling wave planning: | A type of planning where the short-term plan is known in great detail and the long-term plan is defined in as much detail as possible, but more information gets added to the plan as details become available. |
| SMART: | An acronym for goal setting that stands for Specific, Measurable, Agreed-Upon, Realistic, and Time-Bounded. |
| Stage-gating: | Important decisions are built into checkpoints throughout the project. Makes use of pass/recycle/hold/stop decisions at critical points and only stages that “pass” can continue forward. Details can be added at these critical points as information becomes available. |
| Stakeholders: | People with an interest or concern in the project |
| The triple constraint: | Consists of three factors (time, cost, and scope) that affect the overall quality of a project. For example, if costs increase, then the scope of the project will need to decrease in order to compensate and not lose quality. |
| Work breakdown structure: | An organization tool that breaks down goals into their deliverables and work packages. |
| Wrap-up: | A part of the close-out process that includes creating a final recording of the lessons learned and a summary of the analyses of your project. |
Project Management Module: Proactive Project Management Worksheet