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Acceptance
Formal agreement that a deliverable meets its agreed acceptance criteria. The sponsor or customer signs, with the users. It often starts the warranty and releases the final payment.
Acceptance criteria
The checks a deliverable must pass before it is accepted, agreed before the work starts. In agile work, a definition of done adds checks shared by every item.
Active listening
Full attention to the facts and the feeling behind them, saying back what you heard, and asking before you answer (after Rogers and Farson, 1957).
Activity
A piece of work with a clear end and an owner, taken from a work package. The schedule puts activities in order and in time.
Activity on node
A network in which each activity is a box and each arrow a dependency. PMI® calls the drawing method precedence diagramming; APM speaks of a precedence network.
Adoption and benefits realisation
Adoption is people using the outputs. Realisation turns that use into measured benefits, mostly after handover; APM makes the sponsor accountable for measuring it.
Analogous, parametric and bottom-up
Estimating from a similar past job; from a quantity times a rate from past data; from each work package, added up. APM also says comparative (analogous) and analytical (bottom-up).
APM Body of Knowledge
APM's reference book for project work, eighth edition. The PFQ and PMQ exams use its terms.
Introduction: project management certifications and this series
Assurance
Checks by people independent of the team, which give the sponsor and board confidence that the project will meet its objectives. Wider than quality assurance.
Baseline
The approved version of scope, schedule and cost (APM adds quality) that progress is measured against. PMI®: performance measurement baseline; APM: deployment baseline.
The approved version of the scope, schedule or budget that progress and changes are measured against. It moves only by a decided change.
Basis of estimates
PMI®'s name for the record behind an estimate: its assumptions, constraints, level of detail, range and confidence. APM stresses recording the assumptions.
BATNA and walk-away point
BATNA: best alternative to a negotiated agreement (Fisher and Ury), what you do if talks fail. Its value sets your walk-away point (APM: bottom line; Raiffa: reservation price).
Benefit owner and benefit profile
The benefit owner, in the business, makes a benefit happen and measures it after handover. APM's benefit profile records its measure, baseline, target and owner.
Burndown and burnup
A burndown plots the work left against an ideal line from the total to zero. A burnup plots the work done and the total scope, so added scope shows as a step.
Business case
The justification for a project: the need, the options, their costs, benefits and risks, and a recommendation. The sponsor owns it. The ICB4 says business or organisational justification.
Capacity
The work a person or team can take on in a period, after meetings, leave and other duties. In iterative work, a stable team's capacity is fixed and the work is fitted to it.
Cause-and-effect diagram and five whys
A fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram sorts the possible causes of one effect into groups. The five whys go deep down one group, until the answer is a cause you can fix and prevent.
Change and transformation
Change improves how things are done today. Transformation is a deeper shift to something new, led by a vision (ICB4, APM). PMI®'s outline speaks of organizational change.
Change control
The project process that logs, assesses and decides changes to a baseline. The ICB4 calls it change management; PMI® and APM keep that term for organisational change.
Change control board
PMI®: a group that approves, defers or rejects changes and records why. APM makes the sponsor accountable for the decision. Often the steering group plays this role.
Change curve
A picture of how morale and performance often dip after a change is announced, then recover as people adopt the new way. Adapted from Kübler-Ross's stages of reaction.
Change freeze
A set period when new change requests wait, for example around go-live or a busy season, so that no new risks are added (APM BoK).
Change log
The record of every change request, proposed or approved: who asked, the impact, the decision and why, the owner and the status. APM also says change register.
Change management
Helping people and groups move from today's way of working to a new one, so that the benefits come. Not change control, which guards the approved baselines.
Closure report
The last report: the result against the plan, what was accepted, open matters with owners, and how benefits will be tracked. APM: project closure report; PMI®: final report.
Code of conduct
A body's written rules for ethical practice. IPMA® and PMI® call theirs a code of ethics and professional conduct; APM's is a code of professional conduct.
Committed cost
A cost bound by an order or a contract but not yet paid. The ICB4 calls these liabilities; APM speaks of commitments.
Common and special cause variation
Common cause: the normal noise of a stable process; change the process to reduce it. Special cause: something changed, signalled by a point outside the limits or a run of seven.
Communication plan
What goes to whom and why, when, how, and who owns it. ICB4: information plan. PMBOK® Guide: communications management plan. APM: communication plan.
Competence
Being able to use knowledge, skills and abilities to get the results you want (after the ICB4's definition).
Introduction: project management certifications and this series
Compliance
Keeping the project within the rules that apply to it, from binding law to voluntary standards, and being able to show the evidence.
Cone of uncertainty
The range of an estimate is wide early and narrows as facts arrive (Boehm, 1981; named by McConnell, 1997). APM calls it the estimating funnel.
Configuration management
Keeping one agreed, traceable version of each product: items identified, changes controlled, status reported, audited. The ICB4 says scope configuration.
Conflict
A clash that matters to the people in it: over what to do, how to do it, or relationships. Handled with respect, it can improve decisions.
Conflict of interest
A personal stake that could bias, or seem to bias, a decision you take for the project. All three codes ask you to declare it.
Contingency and management reserve
Contingency covers identified risks (APM: risk budget). Management reserve covers risks nobody has found (APM adds some very unlikely, very severe ones), held above the project manager.
Contingency plan
A response prepared now and started only by a trigger. PMI®: contingent response strategy; APM: contingent (reactive) response. The ICB4 also lists fallback plans.
Control account
A group of work packages with one owner, where budget, schedule and actual costs are compared. A PMI® term, also used with earned value.
Control cycle
Plan, measure, compare, act, report. Inside the agreed thresholds you correct the work; beyond them you escalate and change the plan through change control.
Control limits
The mean of a stable period plus and minus three standard deviations, by a common convention. They show what the process does, not what is required.
Cost aggregation
Adding cost estimates up from work packages to control accounts to the whole project, so the budget is built from the work. PMI®'s name for the step.
Cost baseline
PMI®'s term for the approved budget spread over time, without the management reserve; changed only through change control. APM treats the cash flow forecast as the first baseline.
Cost of capital and hurdle rate
The rate Finance sets for discounting: what the organisation's money costs (APM: WACC), or the lowest return it accepts. Public bodies often use a lower rate.
Cost of quality
Prevention and appraisal (getting it right) against internal and external failure (getting it wrong), after Feigenbaum (1956). More prevention pays only up to an optimal point.
CPD and PDUs
Continuing professional development: planned learning after you certify. IPMA® and APM say CPD; PMI® counts professional development units (PDUs).
Crashing and fast-tracking
Two ways to shorten a schedule without cutting scope: add resources to critical activities (it costs money), or overlap activities (it risks rework). PMI®: schedule compression.
Crisis
A sudden event that threatens the project's goals at once, often with no conflict before it. Not a conflict stage: act, communicate, recover.
Critical path
The longest chain of dependent activities. It sets the earliest finish, so a delay on it delays the project. Activities off it have float.
The longest path through the network, so it sets the shortest possible duration. Its activities have no float: a delay on any of them moves the end date.
Cycle time and throughput
Cycle time runs from the start of an item to its finish (PMI®'s lead time runs from the board to delivery). Throughput: items finished per week. Little's law: cycle time = WIP ÷ throughput.
Definition of done
A checklist that every item must pass before it counts as finished (PMBOK® Guide glossary; the Scrum Guide). Acceptance criteria belong to one item; the definition of done applies to all.
Dependency
A link between two activities: finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish or start-to-finish. Hard links come from the work, the law or a contract; soft links are a choice.
Discount factor
What one euro in year t is worth today at rate r: 1 ÷ (1 + r)^t. At 5%, it is 0.952 for year 1 and 0.907 for year 2.
Distributed team
A team whose members work in different places or time zones. PMI® and the ICB4: virtual team. APM: dispersed team (also virtual or remote). The PMQ adds hybrid teams.
Diverge, then converge
A pattern for team decisions: first collect options and views, often from each person alone; then narrow them to one choice, made by whoever holds the authority.
Diversity and inclusion
Diversity: the range of different people in a team. Inclusion: a setting where each of them is welcome, heard and able to contribute. Diversity pays only with inclusion.
Early-life support
A set period after go-live when the project team stays on to fix problems fast, before the permanent support team works alone. It ends on agreed measures, not a date.
Effort and duration
Effort is the amount of work, in person-days. Duration is the time from start to finish. Duration = effort ÷ the people, each counted by their share of time.
Emotional intelligence
Knowing and managing your own emotions, and reading and handling other people's. The PMBOK® Guide groups it in four areas; two of them are about yourself.
Engagement levels
Unaware, resistant, neutral, supportive, leading (the PMBOK® Guide's names). Mark each group now and needed; APM's analysis uses support, opposition or undecided.
Estimate at completion (EAC)
The forecast total cost. Each common formula rests on an assumption, for example that the cost efficiency so far continues: BAC ÷ CPI.
Examination content outline
PMI®'s public blueprint of what the PMP® exam tests: three domains, their tasks and their weights.
Introduction: project management certifications and this series
Exception report
A report sent between the regular ones as soon as a forecast will break an agreed limit, with the cause, the options and a recommendation.
Expectation management
Steering what stakeholders expect, so they expect what the project will really deliver, and when. The ICB4 builds it on the communication plan.
Expected monetary value (EMV)
Probability times impact in money, added up over the risks. It is an average, not a forecast of one outcome.
Five conflict modes
Competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating (after Thomas and Kilmann). The PMBOK® Guide names five matching techniques, such as force/direct.
Fixed price and cost plus
Fixed price: an agreed price for a defined scope, so the supplier carries the cost risk. Cost plus fee (PMI®: cost-reimbursable): actual costs plus a fee, so the buyer carries most of it.
Forecast of the final cost
Spent, plus committed, plus the estimate still to come. PMI® calls it the estimate at completion. Compare it with the whole budget.
Forward and backward pass
Two sweeps through the network. Forward gives early starts and finishes, taking the largest finish where arrows meet. Backward gives late dates, taking the smallest start.
Funding and financing
The ICB4 says funding for money from inside the organisation and financing for money from outside, such as a loan. PMI® and APM say funding for both.
Gate
A decision point between phases: look back at what was delivered, look forward at the business case, then go on, change course or stop. PMI®: phase gate; APM: decision gate.
Governance
Who holds authority over a project and who answers for what: who may decide, within which limits, how reports flow up, and who checks.
Hybrid
A mix: for example a predictive frame with fixed milestones and gates, and iterative teams inside it. Most projects end up here.
ICB4
IPMA®'s Individual Competence Baseline, version 4: the standard its certifications assess. Free to download from IPMA®.
Introduction: project management certifications and this series
Information and message
Information is what the sender sends; the message is what the receiver takes from it. The ICB4 separates the two. Communication works when they match.
Integrated project management plan
One plan that joins scope, schedule, cost, resources, risk, quality and communication, and checks that they agree. APM abbreviates it PMP®, which is not PMI®'s exam.
Integrity and reliability
Integrity: acting on your own values. Reliability: others can count on you to do what you agreed, or to warn early when you cannot.
Internal rate of return (IRR)
The discount rate at which the NPV is zero. Compare it with the hurdle rate. It ignores size, and cash flows that change sign twice can give two IRRs.
Investment appraisal
APM's term for judging an investment, with simple measures such as return on investment and discounted ones such as NPV, IRR and net present social value.
Issue
For APM, a problem that breaks, or will break, the limits delegated to the project, so the sponsor decides. Others use it for any risk that has happened.
Iterative (agile)
Short, fixed timeboxes that each end with a working result shown to users; the backlog is reordered as they learn. PMI® groups it under adaptive.
Latent, emergent, escalated
The ICB4's three broad stages of conflict: felt but not acted on; open, but still calm and factual; emotional, with sides taken.
Leadership and management
Management runs the means: plans, budgets, staffing, control. Leadership sets direction, aligns people and inspires them (after Kotter). A project manager needs both.
Leading and lagging indicators
Lagging indicators show what has happened, such as work done or money spent. Leading ones warn early, such as open defects or blocked work. PMI®'s guide names both.
Leading yourself
Knowing your values, first reactions and limits, and managing your time, stress and learning. ICB4: self-reflection and self-management. APM: leadership of self.
Lessons learned
Knowledge gained on a project that should change how this project or the next one works. Collect lessons throughout, not only at the end, and act on them.
Life cycle and phase
The phases a project passes through from the first idea to the close. Each phase delivers something that is checked before the next one starts.
Make or buy
Deciding whether to do a piece of work in-house or buy it, on full costs, skills, capacity, control and risk. PMI® calls it make-or-buy analysis; APM sets make-or-buy criteria.
Measurement baseline
The approved plan of scope, schedule and cost that progress is measured against. PMI®: performance measurement baseline. APM: deployment baseline.
Mediator and arbitrator
A mediator helps the parties talk and find their own solution. An arbitrator hears both sides and decides for them.
Mid-level and Senior
This series' two levels. Mid-level: you lead projects of moderate complexity. Senior: you lead complex projects and other people.
Introduction: project management certifications and this series
Milestone
A key point or event with no duration, such as the end of a stage. This series names each one as a state reached, with a check and a person who decides.
MoSCoW
Must have, should have, could have, won't have this time. Described by Dai Clegg and Richard Barker (1994); a core practice of the DSDM agile framework.
Net present value (NPV)
Each year's net cash flow times its discount factor, added up, with the investment as a minus in year 0. Above zero, the project earns more than the rate.
Organisational culture
The unwritten rules of how things are done in a group. Schein sees three levels: visible artefacts, stated values, and shared assumptions that nobody questions.
Output, outcome and benefit
Output: what the project delivers. Outcome: what changes when people use it. Benefit: the measurable gain from that change. PMI® often says deliverable for output.
Parallel running
Keeping the old way going beside the new one until the new one meets agreed criteria. It is safer, but costs double effort for a while.
Pareto chart
Bars for the causes of a problem, the largest first, with a line of their cumulative share, so the vital few stand out. ‘80/20’ is a rule of thumb (after Juran).
Payback period
The time until the cash coming back equals the cash put in. Discounted payback adds present values, so it comes later. Both ignore cash after payback.
PESTLE
A checklist of forces outside the organisation: political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental. Usually traced to Francis Aguilar's 1967 study of environmental scanning.
Planned value, earned value, actual cost
PV: the budget of the work planned by the status date. EV: the budget of the work really done. AC: what the done work cost, counted the way the budget was.
Plan–do–check–act (PDCA)
A loop for improving in small, tested steps. After Shewhart (1939) and Deming, who taught it in Japan from 1950 and later preferred ‘study’ to ‘check’.
PMBOK® Guide
PMI®'s guide to the project management body of knowledge, now in its eighth edition, with The Standard for Project Management.
Introduction: project management certifications and this series
Positions and interests
A position is what someone asks for; an interest is why they ask (after Fisher and Ury). Agreements built on interests last longer.
Power and authority
Authority is the formal right to decide. Power is wider: expertise, respect and relations count too. In PMI®'s grids, power means authority and influence is a separate axis.
Power–interest grid
Places each stakeholder by power over the project and interest in its outcome, to choose where to start. Traced to Mendelow (1981); described by Eden and Ackermann (1998).
Predictive (linear)
Scope fixed early, planned in detail, one pass through the phases. PMI® says predictive, APM linear, the ICB4 waterfall.
Product owner, developers, scrum master
Scrum's three accountabilities: the product owner orders the backlog for value, the developers build the increment, and the scrum master helps the team use Scrum and removes obstacles.
Psychological safety
A shared belief in a team that people can ask, disagree or admit a mistake without being embarrassed or punished (after Edmondson). It does not lower standards.
Push, pull and interactive
The PMBOK® Guide's three methods. Push: sent to people, like a report. Pull: fetched from a shared place, like a project site. Interactive: a live exchange, like a meeting.
Quality
Fitness for purpose, and conformance to the agreed requirements. APM names both; the PMBOK® Guide measures it by acceptance criteria, the definition of done and fitness for use.
Quality assurance and quality control
Assurance checks the process, with audits and reviews, to prevent defects. Control checks each deliverable against its acceptance criteria, with tests and inspections, to find them.
RACI
A common coding for a responsibility chart. Responsible: the people doing the work. Accountable: the one owner, who approves the result. Consulted: asked before. Informed: told after.
RAG status
Red, amber or green, each tied to a threshold agreed before the first report. PMI® shows them as stoplight charts in dashboards; APM speaks of traffic lights.
Reduce or mitigate
Lowering the chance or the impact of a threat. APM and the ICB4 say reduce; PMI® says mitigate.
Requirement
What a result must have or do to meet a need. Needs often go unsaid, so they are drawn out, written down, traced to an objective and agreed.
Resistance
Holding back from a change, often from fear of losing a skill, status, control or certainty. It can point to a real flaw, so treat it as information.
Resource
Anything the work needs that someone must provide: people and their skills, equipment, facilities, materials and tools. Money is one too, but budgets are managed as finance.
Resource calendar
PMI®'s term for when each person or item is available to the project, including leave, part-time work and other commitments.
Resource histogram
Bars showing how many people the plan needs in each period, against a line for the people available. Bars above the line are overloads.
Resource manager or line manager
The person with authority over staff lent to a project. PMI® and APM say resource manager; the ICB4 speaks of line management in the permanent organisation.
Resource smoothing and levelling
Smoothing holds the end date and shifts work only inside float (APM: it may also change the people). Levelling keeps the people limit and lets the date move. PMI® spells it leveling.
Root cause analysis
Finding the underlying cause of a defect, so that fixing it stops the defect coming back. The ICB4 and PMI® use this name; APM files it under diagnostic analytics.
Scope and exclusions
What the project delivers and the work that produces it, plus a written list of what it does not include. The ICB4 and APM count outcomes and benefits in scope.
Scope creep
Scope that grows while time, cost and resources stay the same (after the PMBOK® Guide). A change that is logged, assessed and decided by the right person is not creep.
Servant leadership
Leading by serving the team first: meeting its needs, removing blocks and helping people grow (after Greenleaf). PMI® defines it; APM links it to self-managing teams.
Shared vision
A short, plain picture of the future the project creates and why it matters, agreed with key stakeholders, repeated often and kept current. PMI®'s outline says common vision.
Situational leadership
Fitting direction and support to how able and how willing a person is on one task (after Hersey and Blanchard, 1969). PMI® and APM use the term; the ICB4 names no model.
Specification limits
The limits the requirements set. PMI®: specification limits; APM: acceptance criteria; the ICB4: target values for quality indicators. They are not control limits.
SPI and CPI
The schedule and cost performance indices: EV ÷ PV and EV ÷ AC. Below 1 means behind schedule, or over budget. APM reads the SPI as productivity.
Sponsor
The senior person accountable for the business case and the benefits. Secures the funding, often chairs the board, and is the project manager's first point of escalation.
Sprint
A fixed period of one month or less in which a team turns backlog items into a usable increment. Scrum's word; PMI® also says iteration; APM and the ICB4 say timebox.
Stages of team development
Forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning (after Tuckman, 1965, and Tuckman and Jensen, 1977). A pattern, not a timetable: teams stall, slip back or skip.
Stakeholder
Anyone who takes part in a project, is affected by it, can affect it, or cares how it turns out, inside or outside the organisation.
Stakeholder engagement
Identifying, analysing, planning and acting to win and keep people's support. APM prefers it to ‘stakeholder management’; the ICB4 and PMI® use both.
Standard deviation (SD)
The spread of an estimate. PERT's shortcut is (P − O) ÷ 6. For a chain of independent activities, square the SDs, add them, and take the square root.
Steering board
Senior people who direct the project and take decisions beyond the project manager's limits. The ICB4 and PMI®: steering committee; APM: governance board or project board.
Story points and planning poker
Story points: relative sizes of work items. Planning poker: each member picks a card in private, all show at once, and the highest and lowest explain before the team votes again.
Strategic resource plan
The ICB4's top layer of the resource plan: who is responsible for each part of resourcing, such as who asks for people, who lends them and who settles a clash.
Sunk cost
Money already spent. It is gone whatever you decide, so a decision to continue, change or stop weighs only the costs and benefits still to come.
Sustainability
Weighing a project's long-term social, environmental and economic effects (people, planet, profit). APM's PMQ syllabus adds administrative ones.
Tacit and explicit knowledge
Explicit knowledge can be written down and shared. Tacit knowledge lives in people as skill and judgement, and moves mainly by working together (after Polanyi, 1966).
Tailoring
Fitting the approach, the governance and the processes to one project: add what it needs, drop what only costs effort, and review the fit.
Target cost
A contract with an agreed target cost. Overruns and savings against the target are shared between buyer and supplier by an agreed ratio.
Threat and opportunity
Uncertain events that would harm or help the objectives. PMI® and APM call both ‘risk’; the ICB4 says ‘risk and opportunity’.
Three-point estimate
Optimistic (O), most likely (M) and pessimistic (P) values. Triangular mean (O + M + P) ÷ 3; PERT mean (O + 4M + P) ÷ 6. PMI®'s guide says multipoint estimating.
Thresholds and tolerances
How far a measure may drift before someone must act or escalate. PMI®: control thresholds. APM: tolerances. The ICB4 asks you to signal cost breaches.
Time and materials (T&M)
The buyer pays for the time used at agreed rates, plus materials, and carries the risk of how long the work takes. A cap (APM: a not-to-exceed limit) limits it.
Timebox and release plan
A timebox is a fixed period, often two weeks, in which the scope flexes. A release plan groups several timeboxes and shows what each should deliver.
To-complete performance index (TCPI)
The cost efficiency the remaining work needs to meet a target: the work left, BAC − EV, divided by the money left, BAC − AC (or EAC − AC once a new EAC is approved).
Tolerance and threshold
A preset limit within which the project manager may decide. APM: tolerance. PMI®: threshold (PMI® keeps ‘tolerance’ for the allowed variation of a quality requirement).
Total float and free float
Total float: how long an activity can slip before the end date moves (late start − early start). Free float: how long before the next activity must start later.
Transition and handover
Moving the result into use by the people who will run it. The ICB4 says handover; PMI®, transition to operations; APM, transition into use, into business as usual.
Value
What the benefits are worth, set against the costs and any disbenefits (harm the change causes). PMI®: value worth the effort and expense. APM: value for money.
Velocity
The story points of accepted work that one team finishes in a sprint. A basis for a forecast given as a range; never a target, and never compared between teams.
Verification and validation
Verification: was it built as specified? The project checks it. Validation: does it meet the real need? Users or the client check it, ending in formal acceptance.
Warranty period
A period after acceptance in which the supplier must fix defects at its own cost. After it, a fix is a paid change.
Work breakdown structure (WBS)
A tree that divides all of the project's work into smaller parts, down to work packages with clear boundaries and one owner each.
Work-in-progress (WIP) limit
The most items allowed in one column of a Kanban board at a time. When a column is full, people help finish work before new work starts.
Working agreement
The rules a team writes for how it works: meetings, decisions, conflicts, what done means. PMI®: team charter. APM: project charter. ICB4: team norms and rules.
Zone of possible agreement (ZOPA)
The range between the two sides' walk-away points. A deal is possible only inside it; with no overlap, each side takes its BATNA.