PROJECT MANAGEMENT is “the use of specific knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to deliver something of value to people. The development of software for an improved business process, the construction of a building, the relief effort after a natural disaster, the expansion of sales into a new geographic market—these are all examples of projects.”
Project Management Institute (PMI), https://www.pmi.org
typical members of a PROJECT TEAM
- Project Manager (PM): an individual who is tasked with leading and managing a project and are also tasked with leading, coordinating between, and managing a team of individuals who may be within or outside of their company’s personnel.
- Project Management Office (PMO): the title of a person, business, or group that maintains the standards of the project process and may comprise of a public, private, or hybrid entity depending upon the project’s sponsor and funding provider.
- Project Team: any collective of persons who work day-to-day in accomplishing the individual tasks required for project completion. The team may include internal and external sources under contract of a single or multiple sources and are usually contractually connected for project execution.
- Sponsor: the Owner or Promoter of a project who typically outlines the various goals and major targets the project must partake to be considered a success. Also, the sponsor may or may not be responsible for funding the project.
- Stakeholders: people or groups that maintain a unified interests or concern about the project. This can include the greater good of the public, future renters or leasers, individuals or organizations providing the funding or capital, authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs), owner, architect, engineers, and even contractors.
three most common PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGIES
- Agile: typically used to provide projects through short, iterative bursts of work called “Sprints”. This methodology supports a more flexible working style with quick turn-arounds on smaller subsets of work which is usually derived from the project’s “backlog”.
- Waterfall: the traditional project management methodology where a project maintains clearly defined and sequential project phases, each with a maintainable starting and ending date prior to the next phase progressing. This methodology is best used on long-term projects and projects that maintain relatively low risks of changes or revisions to the overall project plan.
- Hybrid: is the marriage of the Agile and Waterfall methodologies to provide a Project Manager and Project Team with the ability to adapt what techniques work best given the time frame provided. This technique might include a series of “Sprints” to achieve a specific project phase maintained in a linear timeframe, or might include a series of “Sprints” outside of the linear timeframe that are required to maintain overall project completion.
most common PROJECT MANAGEMENT TERMS
- Acceptance Criteria: metric by which the project is measured to determine it’s completed success.
- Backlog: from Agile methodology, is a log, list, chart, etc. utilized to track every single task needing completion in a project’s or product’s development.
- Baseline: the estimate of a project’s scope, schedule, and budget/costs and is created during the initial planning stage. This serves as a guide to compare project performance against each phases’ execution as well as overall project health.
- Business Plan or Case: formal document or proposal that clearly defines the intended goals and tangible outcomes of a project and how to obtain them; and may contain additional background information about the project or team.
- Communications Log: a record of communication between all Project Stakeholders or Team Members and is managed by the Project Manager. Will minimally include to/from, date sent, subject, attachments or enclosures, and media type being sent.
- Contingency: a plan for possible disaster occurrence during the project’s life but is more defined outside of “backing up data” and “hiring new employee”. These are plans of action for events including holds placed on funding, loss of professional/member of the project team, death of owner, or even major blizzard or power outage on project deadline dates.
- Critical Path or Critical Path Method (CPM): a scheduling algorithm developed by DuPont and Remington Rand companies in the late 1950s that clearly defines the mission critical tasks to project completion.
- Dependency: later project tasks or activities that are either interdependent or require the completion of a prior task/activity in order to proceed.
- Deliverable: a tangible items or objective critical to the success of a project at the completion of intended project phase; may also be a “Building Block” for future project development.
- Float: the time a task may be delayed until the Critical Path Method’s defined timeline is affected; more commonly known as wiggle room or slack time.
- Gantt Chart: a horizontal bar chart developed by Henry Gantt in 1910 and independently by Karol Adamiecki in 1896 that defines each project phase or tasks as horizontal bars or lines depicting time.
- Kickoff Meeting: initial meeting to announce the formal start of a project. This meeting is usually attended by the Project Manager and key team members, Owner, and key Stakeholders. The meeting outlines the prior agreed upon project vision, plan, processes, and expectations.
- Milestone: a specific mark, review, or date that must be reached according to the schedule for successful completion of the project, task, or phase.
- Minimally Viable Product (MVP) or Minimally Viable Project: refers to a product or project being released as a “pre-launch” or “preliminary” in an effort to limit or avoid scope creep. This allows for the project or product to be vetted prior to proceeding where mistakes or revisions become more costly and time consuming.
- Project Charter: a statement the clearly defines the scope, objective, and participants in a project and the overall project goals; a project cannot be initiated without a project charter.
- Quality Assurance (QA): a standard or degree of excellence related to project completion and the defined process adhered to quality measures. May also be internal minimum standards or specifications that reducing would destroy the intended product or project’s value to the Owners, Stakeholders, industry standards, and end users.
- Quality Control (QC): a review of the project procedure or series or procedures to ensure a product, service, or project is aligned to its’ defined goals and shall be met with Owner and Stakeholder approvals.
- Creep: uncontrolled change or divergence from the project’s scope, schedule, and/or budget. This can encompass billable and non-billable services, additional reviews or phases, and unforeseen risks.
- Triple Constraint: also know as scope, schedule and budget or “project triangle”. Simply put, each of the three sides are inversely related where if one side scales in size, either one or both of the other two must either change to meet the intended project goals or scale while adjusting the intended project goals.
- Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): typically a written document when planning a project that clearly identifies the larger parts, components, or phases of the project and any subsequent tasks, deliverables, or sprints needed to achieve a minimally viable project or project.
Thank you for reading. In part 2, we will look more at the Triple Constraint (i.e. scope, schedule, and budget), discuss various charts and how they might be best utilized for project management and displaying of information, and dive into some advanced project management terms and definitions.
Travis Kyle Miller, AIA