Week 1 Discussion and Project

Page 1 of 2 MGT3035 Fundamentals of Project Management

© 2013 South University

Project Management Definitions There are some commonly used terms in project management.

Activity: A component of work performed during the course of a project.

Budget: The approved estimate for the project or any work breakdown structure component or any schedule activity.

Constraint: The state, quality, or sense of being restricted to a given course of action or inaction.

Cost: The monetary value or price of a project activity or component that includes the monetary worth of the resources required to perform and complete the activity or component or to produce the component.

Critical Path: Generally, but not always, the sequence of schedule activities that determines the duration of the project. Generally, it is the longest path through the project.

Deliverable: Any unique and verifiable product, result, or capability to perform a service that must be produced to complete a process, phase, or project.

Portfolio: A collection of projects or programs and other work that are grouped together to facilitate effective management of that work to meet strategic business objectives.

Program: A group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually.

Project: A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or both. The Project Management Office (PMO) is the organizational body or entity that has been assigned various responsibilities related to the centralized and coordinated management of projects under its domain.

Project Life Cycle: A collection of generally sequential project phases.

Project Phase: A collection of logically related project activities, usually culminating in the completion of a major deliverable.

Project Schedule: The planned dates for performing schedule activities and the planned dates for meeting schedule milestones.

Project Scope: The work that must be performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions.

Resource: Skilled human resources, equipment, services, supplies, commodities, material, budget, or funds.

Risk: The threats present in the project. Risk management should be appropriately planned as per the nature and scale of projects undertaken. It should demonstrate good project governance.

Page 2 of 2 MGT3035 Fundamentals of Project Management

© 2013 South University

Scope: The sum of the products, services, and results to be provided as a project.

Scope Creep: Adding features and functionality without addressing the effects on time, costs, and resources or without customer approval.

Sponsor: The person or group that provides the financial resources, in cash or in kind, for the project.

Stakeholder: Persons and organizations, such as customers, sponsors, performing organization, and the public that are actively involved in the project or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected by the execution or completion of the project.

Triple Constraint: A framework for evaluating competing demands. The triple constraint is often depicted as a triangle where one of the sides or corners represents one of the parameters being managed by the project team.

Work Breakdown Structure: A deliverables-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the projected objectives and create the required deliverables.