Project Management Glossary from A to Z — Project Management

Project Management Glossary — 144 definitions

All the terms defined in the guide's 30 sections, in alphabetical order.
Tip: Ctrl + F to search for a term on the page.

Ongoing activity (operations): Repetitive, continuous work with no defined end (production, support). The opposite of a project.
Audience adaptation: Adjusting the level of detail and angle to the audience (synthetic steering committee, operational team).
Tool/need fit: Principle: the tool is chosen according to the approach, size and team — not by habit or fashion.
Agility: Adaptive approach to project management: move forward in short cycles, adjusting to feedback.
Impact analysis: Assessing the consequences of a change on cost, schedule, quality, risks and resources.
Agile approach: Iterative and incremental, adaptive development in short cycles. Suited to uncertain or evolving needs.
Predictive approach: Detailed upfront planning followed by sequential execution (waterfall, V-cycle). Suited to stable needs.
Trade-off: Balancing decision between constraints: what to prioritize (schedule? cost? quality?) according to project priorities.
Physical progress: The part of a task actually completed, based on concrete deliverables, not on time spent.
Backlog / increment: Product backlog: prioritized list of work. Increment: the finished, usable share of product per sprint.
Product backlog: Prioritized, evolving list of all the product's valuable work. The PO is responsible for it.
Need / need statement: The problem or opportunity behind the project, to be clarified before any solution.
Project review: Final summary: objectives met?, cost/schedule variances, satisfaction, key lessons.
Budget: Estimated costing of all project costs, often built from the WBS.
Specification document: Document detailing the requirements and expected scope of the project.
Knowledge capitalization: Keeping and passing on lessons (best practices, pitfalls) to improve future projects.
CAPM: Certified Associate in Project Management (PMI): entry-level certification, suited to beginners or juniors.
Waterfall / V-cycle: Predictive models: chained phases (the V adds symmetry between specifications and tests/validations).
Effort: Amount of work required, in person-days (or hours). Distinct from duration.
Project charter (mandate): Document formalizing the launch: objectives, scope, budget, schedule, and mandate given to the project manager.
Project manager: Responsible for meeting the project's objectives: plans, coordinates, steers and communicates.
Critical path: The longest sequence of dependent tasks: it sets the project's minimum duration. Any delay on it delays the project.
Closure: Final phase: deliver, get validated (acceptance), archive and capitalize lessons (REX).
Change control board (CCB): Body ruling on change requests (often the steering committee on ordinary projects).
Steering committee: Decision-making body bringing together sponsor and managers: validates milestones, arbitrates, commits resources.
Project committee: Operational body for close tracking: progress, blockers, team coordination.
Meeting minutes: Summary of a meeting: decisions, actions (who/what/when), open points. To be circulated quickly.
Conflict: Opposition between people or groups (interests, methods, personalities). Inevitable, it is managed rather than avoided.
Context: The situation justifying the project: what is happening, why act now.
Constraint: Limit imposed on the project (budget, schedule, regulation, resources) to be known from the start.
Direct / indirect cost: Direct: attributable to the project (labor, purchases). Indirect: allocated overhead (premises, structure).
Actual vs planned cost: Comparison between what was spent and what was budgeted: reveals cost drifts.
CPI / CV: Cost Performance Index / Variance: measure cost performance. CPI < 1 = more expensive than planned.
Success criterion: Indicator to tell whether the objective is met (e.g. "loading time < 2 s").
Criticality: Assessing a risk by combining its probability and impact (often probability × impact). Used to prioritize.
Project lifecycle: The chain of project phases, from launch to closure.
Daily / Review / Retrospective: Daily: daily sync point. Review: increment demo. Retro: team improvement.
Early / late dates: Extreme start/finish dates of a task without delaying the project. Their gap gives the float.
Decomposition: Progressively breaking the project down into smaller, manageable pieces.
Change request: Any request altering the agreed scope, schedule or budget. To be handled formally.
Dependency (link): Ordering relationship between tasks. Most common: finish-to-start (B starts when A finishes).
De-escalation: Set of gestures (calm, listening, reframing) that bring emotional tension down.
Gantt chart: Visual schedule representation: each task is a bar on a calendar axis. Readable at a glance.
Availability: Actually available time of a resource (leave, other projects, part-time): to be factored into the plan.
Duration: Calendar time to perform a task. Depends on effort AND assigned resources and their availability.
Stake (issue): What is at stake: the expected benefit or the risk to avoid. Gives meaning and justifies investment.
Cross-functional project team: Team bringing together people from different departments, with no direct hierarchical link to the project manager.
Three-point estimation: Combining an optimistic, most-likely and pessimistic value (often via PERT) to factor in uncertainty.
Analogous estimation: Estimating based on similar already-completed projects/tasks (fast, but depends on comparability).
Agile mindset: Culture of collaboration, adaptation, feedback and continuous improvement — beyond tools.
Exclusion: What is explicitly OUT of scope. Writing it down avoids implicit expectations and misunderstandings.
Flow: Movement of tasks through stages. Kanban's goal is to make it smooth and fast.
Win-win: Solution satisfying both parties' key interests, rather than a power struggle.
Bottleneck: Stage where work piles up and slows everything down. The WIP limit helps reveal it.
Governance: Organization of project decision and tracking bodies: who decides, who arbitrates, at what pace.
Multi-project governance: Bodies and rules steering all projects coherently.
Hybrid: Combination of both approaches (e.g. predictive scoping + agile delivery), according to project needs.
Assumption: Element assumed true for planning (e.g. "the client will provide content on time"), to be validated and monitored.
Uncertainty: Margin of error inherent to any estimate. The newer/complexer the project, the larger it is.
Initiation: First phase: define the why, rough scope, stakeholders; decide whether to launch or not.
Interest: Degree to which a stakeholder feels concerned by the project and its outcomes.
Iterative / incremental: Moving forward in small cycles (iterations) delivering pieces of value (increments), with regular adjustments.
Iterative and incremental: Iterative: repeating short cycles; incremental: delivering in cumulative pieces of value.
Milestone: Key checkpoint with no duration, marking a deadline or important decision (validation, go/no-go).
Tracking milestone: Regular point (weekly, e.g.) where progress and forecasts are updated.
Milestone on the Gantt: Key point (diamond) with no duration marking a deadline or decision in the schedule.
Jira: Powerful agile tool: backlog, sprints, Scrum/Kanban boards, tracking. Widespread in software development.
Kanban: Agile flow-management method: visualize work, limit work in progress, optimize fluidity.
Leadership: Ability to influence, unite and motivate without relying on formal authority: making people want to follow.
WIP limit: Work In Progress limit: maximum number of tasks allowed simultaneously in a column.
Smoothing / leveling: Respreading tasks (via floats, reassignment, shifting) to bring resources back to a realistic load.
Deliverable: Tangible, verifiable outcome produced by the project (a report, software, a building).
Work package: The smallest WBS element: a task fine enough to be estimated, assigned to someone and tracked.
Portfolio management: Selecting, prioritizing and balancing projects by value, strategy and available resources.
Agile Manifesto: Founding text (2001) stating 4 values and 12 principles of agility.
Float: Delay a task can take without shifting the project (total float) or the next task (free float).
Power/interest matrix: Grid ranking stakeholders by power (influence) and interest (concern), to tailor engagement.
Motivation: What drives commitment: meaning, recognition, autonomy, growth, belonging — beyond salary.
MS Project: Reference software for predictive planning: Gantt, dependencies, critical path, resources, budget.
Negotiation: Seeking agreement between parties with partly diverging interests, ideally win-win.
Scoping note: Initial synthetic document: context, stakes, objectives, rough scope, constraints. Aligns stakeholders.
Notion: All-in-one workspace (docs, databases, boards), very flexible and collaborative.
SMART objective: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound objective. Makes ambition precise and steerable.
Stakeholder: Any person or entity concerned by the project (client, team, management, users).
Scope: Everything the project must deliver. Expanding it without adjusting cost/schedule unbalances the project.
Phase: Project stage grouping a set of activities and leading to deliverables (initiation, planning…).
Workload plan: View of workload assigned to each resource over time; reveals overloads and underloads.
Communication plan: Who to inform, about what, how often and through which channel, throughout the project.
Contingency plan: Action plan prepared in advance, to trigger IF the risk materializes ("plan B").
Schedule: Ordering tasks over time, with start and end dates.
Planning poker: Collective estimation technique where everyone proposes a value (Fibonacci cards), then discusses and converges.
PMI-ACP: Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI): certification focused on agile practices.
PMO (project office): Entity standardizing methods, tooling and supporting project managers, consolidating tracking organization-wide.
PMP: Project Management Professional (PMI): the most globally recognized certification, for experienced project managers.
Points (story points): RELATIVE measure of a story's effort/complexity, preferred over absolute durations in agile.
Project portfolio: All of an organization's projects, managed collectively to serve strategy.
Position vs interest: Position is what one claims; interest, the real need behind it. Negotiating on interests opens solutions.
Power (influence): A stakeholder's ability to weigh on project decisions or course.
Prerequisite: Eligibility conditions (experience, training) required before taking a certification.
PRINCE2: Structured project management method (process-based), widespread in Europe and the UK.
Prioritization: Ordering the backlog by value (and effort), to always work on what matters most first.
Strategic prioritization: Choosing which projects to launch/continue/stop by alignment and expected return.
Change management process: Defined circuit: formalize request → assess impact → decide (accept/reject) → trace.
Product Owner / Scrum Master: PO: owns value, prioritizes backlog. SM: facilitates, protects the team, removes obstacles.
Project: Temporary endeavor (start/end) undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.
Realistic / Time-bound: Realistic: achievable with available means. Time-bound: bounded by a deadline.
Acceptance: Formal client validation that the deliverable meets agreed expectations.
Recognition: Valuing contributions and successes: a powerful, often underused engagement driver.
Risk register: Document listing identified risks, their criticality, response strategy and owner.
100% rule: The WBS must cover 100% of scope work — no more (nothing out of scope), no less (nothing forgotten).
Rescheduling: Updating the schedule from actual progress and remaining work.
Reporting: Regular communication of project progress and health, synthetic and decision-oriented.
PERT network: Graph of tasks and dependencies, used to compute early/late dates, floats and critical path.
Contingency reserve: Amount planned to cover identified uncertainties: a prudent budget always includes one.
Empowerment: Entrusting responsibilities and trusting, to engage rather than control.
Resource: Means needed for completion: people (with skills) and materials/equipment.
Remaining spend: Estimate of what remains to be committed to finish: combined with spent, gives forecast final cost.
Remaining work: Objective estimate of work left to do. More reliable than "felt" percentage.
Lessons learned: Structured review of what went well/badly, to draw reusable lessons.
Project meeting: Framed exchange time (kickoff, tracking, steering committee, retrospective) with objective and decision log.
Risk: Uncertain event which, if it occurs, would impact the project (most often negatively).
Scope creep: Progressive, uncontrolled scope expansion that overflows schedule and costs.
Scrum: Agile framework organizing work in sprints, with 3 roles, 5 events and 3 artifacts.
Sequencing: Logically ordering tasks by dependencies and constraints.
Specific / Measurable: Specific: precise and unambiguous. Measurable: quantifiable, so achievement can be verified.
SPI / SV: Schedule Performance Index / Variance: measure ahead/behind. SPI < 1 = behind.
Sponsor: The project's decision-side owner: signs the charter, arbitrates and supports the project manager.
Sponsor (client): The stakeholder owning the project, funding and arbitrating it. Key support of the project manager.
Sprint: Fixed-duration iteration (1–4 weeks) delivering a usable increment.
Engagement strategy: How to interact with each stakeholder (manage closely, satisfy, inform, monitor) by position.
Response strategies: Avoid, Reduce (mitigate), Transfer, or Accept a risk, by criticality and cost.
Progress tracking: Regular measurement of actual project state (work done, remaining) vs plan.
Overload (overallocation): Situation where a resource is assigned more work than it can perform in a period.
Project dashboard: Synthetic view of key indicators (progress, schedule, cost, risks, quality) to steer at a glance.
Kanban board: Column board (states) where tasks (cards) move left to right. Makes flow visible.
Critical task: Zero-float task on the critical path: to be watched first.
Traceability: Recording requests, decisions and justifications, for history and reference.
Trello: Simple, visual Kanban board tool (cards/columns). Ideal for small projects or light flows.
Golden triangle: Model linking cost, schedule and quality/scope: these three constraints balance out, they cannot all be optimized at once.
User story: User-side need statement: "As a…, I want…, so that…". Value-centered.
Value (agile): Real benefit for the client. Deliver value early and often, rather than everything at the end.
Earned value (EVM): Method crossing planned value, earned value and actual cost to objectively measure schedule and cost.
Planned / earned value / actual cost: EVM's 3 quantities: what was planned, what is actually done (valued), what was spent.
WBS: Work Breakdown Structure: hierarchical breakdown of the project into deliverables then tasks, down to work packages.