Infolific » Project Management Definitions

Steering Committee Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 15:09:49 +0000

A group of high-level stakeholders who are responsible for providing guidance on overall strategic direction. They do not take the place of a sponsor, but help to spread the strategic input and buy-in to a larger portion of the organization. The steering committee is usually made up of organizational peers, [...]

Stakeholder Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 02:44:37 +0000

Stakeholders are an integral part of a project.They are the end-users or clients, the people from whom requirements will be drawn, the people who will influence the design and, ultimately, the people who will reap the benefits of your completed project. It is extremely important to involve stakeholders in all [...]

Scope Creep Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:34:31 +0000

Scope creep refers to the change in a project's scope after the project work has started. Typically, the scope expands by the addition of new features to an already approved feature list. As a result, the project drifts away from its original purpose, timeline, and budget. This change in scope [...]

Definition of ROI

Marios Alexandrou — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 13:09:53 +0000

Most simply, the return on investment (ROI) of a project is how much income is generated after subtracting the costs of the project. Of course, in the real-world ROI is much harder to calculate. This is because the time that a project generates income can stretch over many years. For [...]

Project Risk Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 00:59:49 +0000

There may be external circumstances or events that cannot occur for the project to be successful. If you believe such an event is likely to happen, then it would be a risk. Identifying something as a risk increases its visibility, and allows a proactive risk management plan to be put [...]

Project Team Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:06:44 +0000

The project team consists of the full-time and part-time resources assigned to work on the deliverables of the project all of who will help achieve the project objectives. They are responsible for: understanding the work to be completed planning out the assigned activities in more detail if needed completing assigned [...]

Project Task Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:00:53 +0000

A task can refer to just about any project activity. The length can be short or long, the number of resources can be few or many, and the cost can be quite variable. For the most part, project team members associate the term tasks things they're individually responsible for. Of [...]

Project Portfolio Management

Marios Alexandrou — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:54:55 +0000

The goal of project portfolio management is to organize a series of projects into a single portfolio that describes project objectives, costs, timelines, accomplishments, resources, and risks. In theory, this would allow executives to regularly review entire portfolios, spread resources appropriately and adjust projects to produce the highest departmental returns. [...]

Project Planning Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 11:35:16 +0000

Project planning is the process of quantifying the amount of time and the size of the budget for a project. The output of the project planning process is a project plan that a project manager can use to track the project team's progress. Steve McConnell, author of several software development [...]

Project Objective Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 23:27:59 +0000

The project objective consists of the business benefits that an organization expects to achieve as a result of spending time and exerting effort to complete a project. Project objectives are often confused with project products e.g. the objective of our project is to install system X. This sort of objective [...]

Project Management Institute (PMI) Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 23:09:55 +0000

Established in 1969 and situated outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was founded by five volunteers. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania USA issued Articles of Incorporation for PMI which signified the official inception of the organization. During that same year, the first PMI symposium was held in Atlanta, [...]

Project Lifecycle Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 10:51:10 +0000

The term project lifecycle models how a project is planned, controlled, and monitored from its inception to its completion. Over the years, a number of different models have been developed, beginning with the oldest and simplest being the Waterfall Model. However, as software has become larger and more complex, this [...]

Milestone Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Wed, 29 May 2013 21:45:26 +0000

A milestone is a scheduled event signifying the completion of a major deliverable or a set of related deliverables. A milestone has zero duration and no effort -- there is no work associated with a milestone. It is a flag in the workplan to signify some other work has completed. [...]

Executive Sponsor Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:39 +0000

Executive sponsor (also called project sponsor) is the person that is ultimately responsible for the project within a company. Sometimes this role is held by the project manager, but ideally it is held by someone in senior management. Typically, the executive sponsor is responsible for: Championing the project. Obtaining budget [...]

Business Case Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 04:11:16 +0000

A business case is part of a project's mandate, produced before a project is initiated. Although it may be crafted by many people, the business case is owned by the executive sponsor. The business case addresses, at a high level, the business need that the project seeks to meet. It [...]

Critical Path Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 18:35:38 +0000

The sequence of activities that must be completed on schedule for the entire project to be completed on schedule. This is the longest duration path through the workplan. If an activity on the critical path is delayed by one day, then entire project will be delayed by one day (unless [...]

Assumption Definition

Marios Alexandrou — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 23:34:06 +0000

There may be external circumstances or events that must occur for the project to be successful. If you believe these external events are likely to happen, then you have an assumption. If an event is within the control of the project team, such as having testing completed by a certain [...]