Glossary or PMI Lexicon of Project Management Terms

Published On: October 3rd, 2024Categories: PMP112.7 min readViews: 9657

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PMP® and Agile Glossary

988 project management and agile terms from A to Z, covering what you’ll meet on the PMP® exam. Updated for the PMBOK® Guide – Eighth Edition and the Agile Practice Guide – Second Edition.

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Showing all 988 terms

A

Acceptance Criteria: A set of conditions that are met before deliverables are accepted. See also deliverable and requirement.
Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD): Writing acceptance tests together with the business before development starts, so the work is built to pass them.
Accepted Deliverables: Deliverables that the authorized stakeholder has checked against the acceptance criteria and formally approved. They come out of validating scope.
Accountability: The condition of being answerable for the outcome of a task or project. It is an individual responsibility and is not shared.
Accuracy: Within the quality management system, accuracy is an assessment of correctness.
Acquire Resources: The process of obtaining team members, facilities, equipment, materials, supplies, and other resources necessary to complete project work.
Acquisition: Obtaining human and material resources necessary to perform project activities. Acquisition implies a cost of resources, and is not necessarily financial.
Active Listening: Listening to fully understand: acknowledging, clarifying and confirming what was said, and checking understanding.
Activity: A distinct, scheduled portion of work performed during the course of a project.
Activity Attributes: The details recorded for each schedule activity, such as its ID, WBS ID, description, predecessors, successors, leads and lags, resources, constraints and assumptions.
Activity Duration Estimates: The quantitative assessments of the likely number of time periods that are required to complete an activity.
Activity List: A documented tabulation of schedule activities that shows the activity description, activity identifier, and a sufficiently detailed scope of work description so project team members understand what work is to be performed.
Activity Standard Deviation: A measure of how uncertain a three-point estimate is: (P – O) / 6. The bigger the number, the riskier the estimate.
Activity-on-Node (AON): See precedence diagramming method (PDM).
Actual Cost (AC): The realized cost incurred for the work performed on an activity during a specific time period. See also budget at completion (BAC), earned value (EV), estimate at completion (EAC), estimate to complete (ETC), and planned value (PV).
Actual Duration: The time, in calendar units, between the actual start date of the schedule activity and either the data date of the project schedule, if the schedule activity is in progress, or the actual finish date if the schedule activity is complete.
Adaptive Approach: A development approach in which the requirements are subject to a high level of uncertainty and volatility and are likely to change throughout the project.
Adaptive Life Cycle: A project life cycle that is iterative or incremental.
Adjourning: Tuckman stage 5: the work is done and the team is released, often with a sense of loss.
Adopt a Holistic View: PMBOK 8 principle: look at the whole project and all its connections from start to finish, so every decision considers the interconnected parts and stays aligned with the goals.
Affinity Diagram: A diagram that shows large numbers of ideas classified into groups for review and analysis.
Affinity Estimating: Grouping work items into size buckets with similar items, for example by T-shirt size or Fibonacci number.
Affinity Grouping: The process of classifying items into similar categories or collections on the basis of their likeness
After-Action Review (AAR): A short, structured discussion after an activity about what happened, why it happened and how to do better next time. It began in the U.S. Army.
Agile: A term used to describe a mindset of values and principles as set forth in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.
Agile Approach: A development approach that applies the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto through practices that stress collaboration, adaptability and frequent delivery of value.
Agile Coach: A person with agile knowledge and experience who trains, mentors and guides teams and organizations through their transformation.
Agile Life Cycle: A life cycle that is both iterative and incremental, refining work items and delivering frequently.
Agile Manifesto: The four agile values: individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working software over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation; responding to change over following a plan. It also has 12 principles.
Agile Mindset: A way of thinking and behaving based on the four values and 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto.
Agile Practitioner: A person who embraces the agile mindset and works with like-minded colleagues in cross-functional teams.
Agile Principles: The 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto, such as satisfying the customer through early and continuous delivery, welcoming changing requirements and delivering working software frequently.
Agile Release Planning: High-level planning of a release, usually 3 to 6 months ahead, based on the product vision and roadmap. It sets how many iterations or sprints the release will need.
Agile Suitability Filter: A tool for assessing whether a project suits an agile approach, based on factors such as uncertainty, complexity and stakeholder involvement.
Agreements: Any document or communication that sets out the initial intentions for a project, such as a contract, service-level agreement, memorandum of understanding, purchase order or email.
Alternative Analysis: A method used to evaluate identified options in order to select the options or approaches to use when performing the work of the project.
Ambiguity: A state of being unclear, having difficulty in identifying the cause of events, or having multiple options from which to choose
Analogous Estimating: A technique for estimating the duration, cost, or required resources for an activity or project using historical data from a similar activity or project. See also bottom-up estimating, parametric estimating, program evaluation and review technique (PERT), and multipoint estimating.
Analytical Techniques: Various techniques used to evaluate, analyze, or forecast potential outcomes based on possible variations of project or environmental variables and their relationships with other variables.
Antipattern: A known, flawed way of working that should be avoided.
Apportioned Effort: An activity where effort is allotted proportionately across certain discrete efforts and not divisible into discrete efforts. See also discrete effort and level of effort.
Appraisal Costs: A cost of conformance: money spent checking quality, such as testing, inspections and losses from destructive testing.
Approved Change Request: A change request that has been reviewed through change control and approved for implementation.
Architectural Spike: A timeboxed proof of concept to check whether a technical approach or design will work.
Artifacts: Documents and other items created during a portfolio, program, or project to help manage it and provide information to the project team, stakeholders, and management.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): Machines programmed to perform tasks using patterns similar to human thinking. In projects it can help with forecasting, reporting, spotting risks and automating routine work.
Assess and Implement Changes: PMBOK 8 Governance process that reviews every change request, approves, defers or rejects it, and manages the approved changes to plans, baselines and deliverables.
Assumption: A factor in the planning process considered to be true, real, or certain, without proof or demonstration.
Assumption and Constraint Analysis: An assessment that ensures assumptions and constraints are integrated into the project plans and documents, and that there is consistency among them
Assumption Log: A project document used to record all assumptions and constraints throughout the project.
Attribute Sampling: Method of measuring quality that consists of noting the presence (or absence) of some characteristic (attribute) in each of the units under consideration.
Audit: An independent, structured review to check whether project activities follow the organization’s and the project’s policies, processes and procedures.
Augmented Reality (AR): Technology that overlays digital information on the real world, for example to guide site inspections or show a design in place.
Authority: The right to apply project resources, expend funds, make decisions, or give approvals.
Autocratic Decision-Making: One person makes the decision for the whole group.

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B

Backlog: An ordered list of work to be done, often written as user stories, and prioritized by the business to manage and organize an adaptive or agile project’s work.
Backlog Management: Continuously adding, refining, estimating and reordering backlog items so the most valuable work is always ready next.
Backlog Planning: An activity in which the team, guided by the product owner, reviews and prioritizes backlog items to prepare for upcoming iterations or releases.
Backlog Refinement: Progressive elaboration of the content in the backlog and (re)prioritization of it to identify the work that can be accomplished in an upcoming iteration.
Backward Pass: A critical path method technique for calculating the late start and late finish dates by working backward through the schedule model from the project end date. See also forward pass.
Bar Chart: A graphic display of schedule-related information. In the typical bar chart, schedule activities or work breakdown structure components are listed down the left side of the chart, dates are shown across the top, and activity durations are shown as date-placed horizontal bars. See also Gantt chart.
Baseline: The approved version of a work product that can be changed using formal change control procedures and is used as the basis for comparison to actual results. See also cost baseline, performance measurement baseline, schedule baseline, and scope baseline.
Basis of Estimates: Supporting documentation outlining the details used in establishing project estimates such as assumptions, constraints, level of detail, ranges, and confidence levels.
Be an Accountable Leader: PMBOK 8 principle: guide the team with integrity, make responsible decisions and build trust. Leaders influence, inspire and motivate others.
Behavior-Driven Development (BDD): A test-first practice in which the expected behavior is described in plain-language scenarios that become tests.
Benchmarking: The comparison of actual or planned products, processes, and practices to those of comparable organizations to identify best practices, generate ideas for improvement, and provide a basis for measuring performance.
Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR): Benefits divided by costs. A ratio above 1 means the benefits are greater than the costs.
Benefits: The gains and assets realized by the organization and other stakeholders as the result of outcomes delivered.
Benefits Management Plan: The documented explanation defining the processes for creating, maximizing, and sustaining the benefits provided by a program or project.
Benefits Owner: The person accountable for monitoring, recording and reporting the benefits a project delivers over the agreed timeframe.
Benefits Realization: Achieving the intended benefits once the project’s outputs are put to use. It often continues after the project ends.
Benefits Realization Plan: A document outlining the activities necessary for achieving the planned benefits. It identifies a timeline and the tools and resources necessary to ensure the benefits are fully realized over time.
Bid Documents: All documents used to solicit information, quotations, or proposals from prospective sellers.
Bidder Conference: The meetings with prospective sellers prior to the preparation of a bid or proposal to ensure all prospective vendors have a clear and common understanding of the procurement. Also known as contractor conferences, vendor conferences, or pre-bid conferences.
Bottom-Up Estimating: Estimating each small piece of work in detail, then adding the pieces up to get the estimate for the whole activity or project.
Brainstorming: A group technique for producing many ideas quickly without criticism, then reviewing them.
Branch and Bound: An optimization method that splits a problem into smaller options (branches) and drops those that can’t beat the best answer found so far. It is used in resource-constrained scheduling.
Budget: The approved estimate for the portfolio, program, or project, or any work breakdown structure component or schedule activity.
Budget at Completion (BAC): The sum of all budgets established for the work to be performed. See also actual cost (AC), earned value (EV), estimate at completion (EAC), estimate to complete (ETC), and planned value (PV).
Buffer: See reserve.
Build an Empowered Culture: PMBOK 8 principle: create a culture of collaboration and shared goals in which stakeholders and teams with diverse skills are trusted to act and take ownership.
Burn Chart: A graphical representation of the work remaining in a timebox or the work completed toward the release of a product or project deliverable
Burn Rate: How fast the project spends its budget, for example cost per month or, in agile, cost per iteration.
Burndown Chart: A chart of the work remaining over time in an iteration or release. The line should fall to zero by the end.
Burnup Chart: A chart of the work completed over time, often with a line for total scope, so changes in scope are easy to see.
Business Analysis: The set of activities performed to support delivery of solutions that align to business objectives and provide continuous value to the organization.
Business Case: A documented economic feasibility study used to establish validity of the benefits to be delivered by a portfolio component, program, or project.
Business Documents: The documents that justify a project and describe its expected benefits, mainly the business case and the benefits management plan.
Business Model Canvas: A one-page, visual summary that describes the value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances. These are often used in Lean Startup situations
Business Need: The impetus for a change in an organization, based on an existing problem or opportunity. The business need provides the rationale for initiating a program or project.
Business Objective: A measurable representation of the goals the business is seeking to achieve. Business objectives are specific and should align to the organizational objectives.
Business Requirement Documents: A listing of all the requirements for a specific project.
Business Requirements: The high-level needs of the organization as a whole, such as the business problem or opportunity and the reasons for starting the project.
Business Rule: A constraint about how the organization wants to operate. These constraints are enforced by data and/or processes and are under the jurisdiction of the business. Business rules need to be supported by solution requirements.
Business Value: The net quantifiable benefit derived from a business endeavor that may be tangible, intangible, or both.

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C

Cadence: A rhythm of activities conducted throughout the project
Capability: The ability to add value or achieve objectives in an organization through a function, process, service, or other proficiency.
Cause: Events or circumstances that currently exist or are certain to exist in the future, which might give rise to risks.
Cause-and-Effect Diagram: A visual representation that helps trace an effect back to its root cause. A cause-and-effect diagram may also be known as a fishbone or Ishikawa diagram.
Center of Excellence (CoE): A team that provides leadership, recommended practices, support and training for a specific discipline across the organization.
Centralized Contracting: One procurement department handles contracts for all projects. Staff build expertise, but have less loyalty to any one project.
Centralized Management and Leadership: A top-down structure in which decisions and authority sit with one person or a small group.
Change: A modification to any formally controlled deliverable, project management plan component, or project document.
Change Control: A process whereby modifications to documents, deliverables, or baselines associated with the project are identified, documented, approved, or rejected. See also change control board (CCB) and change control system.
Change Control Board (CCB): A formally chartered group responsible for reviewing, evaluating, approving, delaying, or rejecting changes to the project, and for recording and communicating such decisions. See also change control and change control system.
Change Control Plan: A component of the project management plan that establishes the change control board, documents the extent of its authority, and describes how the change control system will be implemented. See also project management plan.
Change Control System: A set of procedures that describes how modifications to the project deliverables and documentation are managed and controlled. See also change control and change control board (CCB).
Change Control Tools: Manual or automated tools to assist with change and/or configuration management. At a minimum, the tools should support the activities of the CCB.
Change Log: A comprehensive list of changes submitted during the project and their current status.
Change Management: A comprehensive, cyclic, and structured approach for transitioning individuals, groups, and organizations from a current state to a future state with intended business benefits
Change Management Plan: The part of the project management plan that explains how change requests are raised, assessed, approved or rejected and recorded, and who has the authority to decide.
Change Request: A formal proposal to modify a document, deliverable, or baseline.
Changing Views of Conflict: The modern view is that conflict is natural and can be useful. It should be handled early, openly and in private, by the people involved, and focus on the issue rather than the person.
Charter: See project charter.
Check Sheet: A tally sheet that can be used as a checklist when gathering data
Checklist: A list of items, actions or points to check, used to make sure steps are done consistently and nothing is missed.
Checklist Analysis: A technique for systematically reviewing materials using a list for accuracy and completeness.
Claim: A request, demand, or assertion of rights by a seller against a buyer, or vice versa, for consideration, compensation, or payment under the terms of a legally binding contract, such as for a disputed change.
Claims Administration: The process of handling contract claims, which are disputed changes or requests for compensation between buyer and seller, ideally settled by negotiation first.
Close Project or Phase: The process of finalizing all activities for the project, phase, or contract.
Closing Focus Area: The processes that formally complete a project, phase or contract, or end a project early.
Closing Process Group: The process(es) performed to formally complete or close a project, phase, or contract.
Coaching and Mentoring: Helping team members build skills and confidence: coaching focuses on improving specific performance, mentoring on longer-term growth guided by a more experienced person.
Code of Accounts: A numbering system used to uniquely identify each component of the work breakdown structure (WBS).
Collaborate/Problem Solve: A conflict technique: working openly with several viewpoints to find a solution that everyone commits to. It is the most lasting, win-win approach.
Collect Requirements: The process of determining, documenting, and managing stakeholder needs and requirements to meet project objectives.
Collective Ownership: Any team member may change any work product, so the whole team shares ownership and accountability.
Colocation: Placing team members in the same physical location, sometimes in a shared “war room”, to improve communication and teamwork.
Communication Blockers: Things that stop a message being received or understood, such as noise, distance, poor encoding, language or cultural differences, and hostility.
Communication Channels: The number of possible two-way links between n people: n(n – 1) / 2. Adding people increases communication complexity quickly.
Communication Methods: A systematic procedure, technique, or process used to transfer information among project stakeholders.
Communication Model: How a message moves: the sender encodes it, sends it through a medium, and the receiver decodes it. Noise can distort it, and feedback confirms it was understood.
Communication Requirements Analysis: Working out what information each stakeholder needs, in what form and how often, including counting the communication channels.
Communication Styles Assessment: A technique to identify the preferred communication method, format, and content for stakeholders for planned communication activities.
Communication Technology: Specific tools, systems, computer programs, etc., used to transfer information among project stakeholders.
Communications Management Plan: A component of the portfolio, program, or project management plan that describes how, when, and by whom information will be administered and disseminated. See also project management plan.
Community of Practice (CoP): A group of people who share an interest in a topic and meet to exchange knowledge and improve their skills.
Complexity: A characteristic of a program or project or its environment that is difficult to manage due to human behavior, system behavior, and ambiguity.
Compliance: Meeting the laws, regulations, standards, organizational policies, contract obligations and ethical rules that apply to the project.
Component: A predetermined element of a portfolio, program, or project that is work related to the achievement of the strategic objectives of the portfolio, program, or project.
Compromise/Reconcile: A conflict technique: each side gives up something to reach a solution that partly satisfies everyone.
Conduct Procurements: The process of obtaining seller responses, selecting a seller, and awarding a contract.
Configuration Management Plan: The part of the project management plan that explains how project items, such as documents and deliverables, are identified, versioned and controlled, so every change to them is traceable.
Configuration Management System: A collection of procedures used to track project artifacts and monitor and control changes to these artifacts.
Confirmation Bias: A type of cognitive bias that confirms preexisting beliefs or hypotheses
Conformance: Within the quality management system, conformance is a general concept of delivering results that fall within the limits that define acceptable variation for a quality requirement.
Constraint: A limiting factor that affects the execution of a portfolio, program, project, or process.
Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO): A parametric model that estimates the effort, cost and schedule of a software project from its size.
Context Diagram: A scope model that shows a system and how people and other systems (actors) interact with it through inputs and outputs.
Contingency: An event or occurrence that could affect the execution of the project, which may be accounted for with a reserve.
Contingency Plan: A planned response to carry out if a risk occurs or its trigger appears.
Contingency Reserve: Time or money allocated in the schedule or cost baseline for known risks with active response strategies. See also management reserve and project budget.
Contingent Response Strategies: Responses provided which may be used in the event that a specific trigger occurs.
Contingent Response Strategy: A risk response planned for use only if specific trigger conditions happen, for example switching to a backup supplier if the main one fails.
Continuous Delivery: The practice of delivering feature increments immediately to customers, often through the use of small batches of work and automation technology.
Continuous Integration: Frequently merging each team member’s work into a shared version and checking it automatically.
Continuum of Approaches: The range of life cycles between fully predictive and fully agile. Most real projects mix elements of both, which is why it is often called a hybrid life cycle.
Contract: A contract is a mutually binding agreement that obligates the seller to provide the specified product or service or result and obligates the buyer to pay for it.
Contract Change Control System: The system used to collect, track, adjudicate, and communicate changes to a contract.
Control: Comparing actual performance with planned performance, analyzing variances, assessing trends to effect process improvements, evaluating possible alternatives, and recommending appropriate corrective action as needed.
Control Account: A management control point where scope, budget, actual cost, and schedule are integrated and compared to earned value for performance measurement.
Control Chart: A graphic display of process data over time and against established control limits, which has a centerline that assists in detecting a trend of plotted values toward either control limit.
Control Costs: The process of monitoring the status of the project to update the project costs and manage changes to the cost baseline.
Control Limits: The area composed of three standard deviations on either side of the centerline or mean of a normal distribution of data plotted on a control chart, which reflects the expected variation in the data. See also specification limits.
Control Procurements: The process of managing procurement relationships, monitoring contract performance, making changes and corrections as appropriate, and closing out contracts.
Control Quality: The process of monitoring and recording results of executing the quality management activities to assess performance and ensure the project outputs are complete, correct, and meet customer expectations.
Control Resources: The process of ensuring that the physical resources assigned and allocated to the project are available as planned, as well as monitoring the planned versus actual utilization of resources and performing corrective action as necessary.
Control Schedule: The process of monitoring the status of the project to update the project schedule and manage changes to the schedule baseline.
Control Scope: The process of monitoring the status of the project and product scope and managing changes to the scope baaseline.
Controlling PMO: A PMO that provides support and requires projects to comply with set frameworks, templates and governance. It has moderate control.
Corrective Action: Work done to bring future performance back in line with the plan after a deviation.
Cost Aggregation: Adding activity cost estimates up to work packages, then to control accounts and higher WBS levels, to build the budget.
Cost Baseline: The approved version of the time-phased project budget, excluding any management reserves, which can be changed only through formal change control procedures and is used as a basis for comparison to actual results. See also baseline, performance measurement baseline, schedule baseline, and scope baseline.
Cost Estimates: Estimates of the likely cost of the resources needed to complete the work, including contingency for identified risks.
Cost Forecasts: Updated predictions of the project’s final cost, such as a newly calculated EAC, compared with the budget at completion.
Cost Management Plan: A component of a program or project management plan that describes how costs will be planned, structured, and controlled. See also project management plan.
Cost of Change: The cost of making a change rises the later it happens in the project. This is why early feedback and engagement matter.
Cost of Quality (COQ): All costs incurred over the life of the product by investment in preventing nonconformance to requirements, appraisal of the product or service for conformance to requirements, and failure to meet requirements.
Cost Performance Index (CPI): A measure of the cost efficiency of budgeted resources expressed as the ratio of earned value to actual cost. See also schedule performance index (SPI).
Cost Variance (CV): The amount of budget deficit or surplus at a given point in time, expressed as the difference between the earned value and the actual cost. See also schedule variance (SV).
Cost-Benefit Analysis: A financial analysis method used to determine the benefits provided by a project against its costs.
Cost-Plus-Award-Fee Contract: A category of contract that involves payments to the seller for all legitimate actual costs incurred for completed work, plus an award fee representing seller profit.
Cost-Plus-Fixed-Fee Contract: A type of cost-reimbursable contract where the buyer reimburses the seller for the seller’s allowable costs (allowable costs are defined by the contract) plus a fixed amount of profit (fee).
Cost-Plus-Incentive-Fee Contract: A type of cost-reimbursable contract where the buyer reimburses the seller for the seller’s allowable costs (allowable costs are defined by the contract), and the seller earns its profit if it meets defined performance criteria.
Cost-Reimbursable Contract: A type of contract involving payment to the seller for the seller’s actual costs, plus a fee typically representing the seller’s profit.
Crashing: A schedule compression technique used to shorten the schedule duration for the least incremental cost by adding resources. See also fast tracking and schedule compression.
Create WBS: The process of subdividing project deliverables and project work into smaller, more manageable components.
Criteria: Standards, rules, or tests on which a judgment or decision can be based or by which a product, service, result, or process can be evaluated.
Critical Chain Method: A scheduling method that allows for limited resources and protects the end date with project and feeding buffers, instead of padding each activity.
Critical Path: The sequence of activities that represents the longest path through a project, which determines the shortest possible duration. See also critical path activity and critical path method.
Critical Path Activity: Any activity on the critical path in a project schedule. See also critical path and critical path method.
Critical Path Drag Cost: The true economic cost of a critical path activity: its resource cost plus the value lost because of the delay it adds to the project.
Critical Path Method (CPM): A method used to estimate the minimum project duration and determine the amount of scheduling flexibility on the logical network paths within the schedule model. See also critical path and critical path activity.
Critical Thinking: Disciplined, logical, evidence-based thinking that includes being open-minded and analyzing problems objectively.
Cross-Functional Team: A team that has all the skills needed to deliver valuable product increments.
Crystal: A family of lightweight agile methods that are tailored to the team’s size and how critical the project is.
Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD): A chart indicating features completed over time, features in other states of development, and those in the backlog
Customer-Valued Prioritization: Delivering the features that matter most to the customer first, so the most value comes early.
Cycle Time: The total elapsed time from the start of a particular activity or work item to its completion.
Cycle Time Chart: A diagram that shows the average cycle time of the work items completed over time
Cynefin Framework: A sensemaking framework that sorts situations into clear, complicated, complex, chaotic and confused, to help choose how to act.

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D

Daily Coordination Meeting: PMBOK 8 and the Agile Practice Guide 2 name for the daily standup: a short daily meeting to review progress, plan the day and raise obstacles. In Scrum it is the daily scrum.
Daily Scrum: The Scrum name for the short daily meeting in which developers review progress, plan the next 24 hours and raise obstacles. Also called the daily sync or daily standup.
Daily Standup: A brief, daily collaboration meeting in which the team reviews progress from the previous day, declares intentions for the current day, and highlights any obstacles encountered or anticipated
Dashboard: A set of charts and graphs showing progress or performance against important measures of the project.
Data: Discrete, unorganized, unprocessed measurements or raw observations.
Data Analysis: Techniques used to organize, assess and evaluate data and information, such as alternatives analysis, root cause analysis, trend analysis and variance analysis.
Data Analysis Techniques: Techniques used to organize, assess, and evaluate data and information.
Data Date: A point in time when the status of the project is recorded.
Data Gathering: Techniques used to collect data and information from various sources, such as brainstorming, interviews, focus groups, questionnaires and benchmarking.
Data Gathering and Analysis Methods: Methods used to collect, assess, and evaluate data and information to gain a deeper understanding of a situation
Data Gathering Techniques: Techniques used to collect data and information from a variety of sources.
Data Representation: Techniques that show data in a visual form, such as charts, matrices, flowcharts, stakeholder maps and mind maps.
Data Representation Techniques: Graphic representations or other methods used to convey data and information.
Decentralized Contracting: A contract administrator is assigned to each project. There is more loyalty to the project but less procurement expertise across the organization.
Decision Tree Analysis: A diagramming and calculation technique for evaluating the implications of a chain of multiple options in the presence of uncertainty.
Decision-Making: Techniques used to choose a course of action from different options, such as voting, autocratic decision-making and multicriteria decision analysis.
Decision-Making Techniques: Techniques used to select a course of action from different alternatives.
Decomposition: A technique used for dividing and subdividing the project scope and project deliverables into smaller, more manageable parts.
Defect: An imperfection or deficiency in a project component where that component does not meet its requirements or specifications and needs to be either repaired or replaced.
Defect Repair: Work done to fix a product or component that doesn’t meet requirements.
Define Activities: The process of identifying and documenting the specific actions to be performed to produce the project deliverables.
Define Scope: The process of developing a detailed description of the project and product.
Definition of Done (DoD): A checklist of all the criteria required to be met so that a deliverable can be considered ready for customer use.
Definition of Ready (DoR): A checklist that a backlog item must meet before the team starts work on it, so it has all the information needed.
Deliverable: Any unique and verifiable product, result, or capability to perform a service that is required to be produced to complete a process, phase, or project.
Delivery Performance Domain: The performance domain that addresses activities and functions associated with delivering the scope and quality that the project was undertaken to achieve
Demonstration (Demo): An event in which the team shows completed work to stakeholders to get feedback and confirm progress.
Dependency: A logical relationship between two or more activities where the timing, sequencing, or completion of one activity is dependent upon another activity.
Depreciation: The loss of an asset’s value over time. Straight-line depreciation takes the same amount each year; accelerated methods (double declining balance, sum of the years’ digits) take more in the early years.
Design for X (DfX): Design guidelines that optimize one particular aspect of a product, the “X”, such as reliability, cost, usability or sustainability.
Design of Experiments (DOE): A statistical method for finding which factors affect a product or process result, by testing several factors at the same time.
Design Thinking: A user-centered, iterative process to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and prototype and test solutions.
Determine Budget: The process of aggregating the estimated costs of individual activities or work packages to establish an authorized cost baseline.
Develop Project Charter: The process of developing a document that formally authorizes the existence of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.
Develop Project Management Plan: The process of defining, preparing, and coordinating all plan components and consolidating them into an integrated project management plan.
Develop Schedule: The process of analyzing activity sequences, durations, resource requirements, and schedule constraints to create the project schedule model for project execution and monitoring and controlling.
Develop Scope Structure: PMBOK 8 Scope process that breaks the deliverables and work into smaller, manageable parts, such as a WBS or a backlog structure.
Develop Team: The process of improving competences, team member interaction, and overall team environment to enhance project performance.
Development Approach: A method used to create and evolve the product, service, or result during the project life cycle such as an adaptive, predictive, or hybrid method.
Development Approach and Life Cycle Performance Domain: The performance domain that addresses activities and functions associated with the development approach, cadence, and life cycle phases of the project
DevOps: A collection of practices for creating a smooth flow of delivery by improving collaboration between development and operations staff.
DevSecOps: DevOps practices with security built into every stage of development and operations.
Diagramming Techniques: Approaches to presenting information with logical linkages that aid in understanding.
Digital Product: A product or service that is delivered, used, and stored in an electronic format
Direct and Manage Project Work: The process of leading and performing the work defined in the project management plan and implementing approved changes to achieve the project’s objectives.
Direct Costs: Costs directly caused by the project, such as team wages, project materials and travel.
Directions of Influence: Classifying stakeholders by where their influence comes from: upward (senior management, sponsor), downward (the team), outward (outside groups such as suppliers and users) or sideward (the project manager’s peers).
Directive PMO: A PMO that manages projects directly by assigning its own project managers. It has high control.
Disbenefit: The measurable result from an outcome that is perceived as negative by one or more stakeholders. Disbenefits use activities and processes that are similar to those used in benefits management and should be identified, categorized, quantified, and measured in the same manner as benefits.
Disciplined Agile (DA): PMI’s process-decision toolkit that helps teams choose their way of working for incremental and iterative delivery.
Discrete Effort: An activity that can be planned and measured and that yields a specific output. See also apportioned effort and level of effort.
Discretionary Dependency: A relationship that is established based on knowledge of best practices within a particular application area or an aspect of the project where a specific sequence is desired.
Distributed Management and Leadership: A structure in which decision-making and authority are shared among individuals and teams. It emphasizes empowerment and is common in agile teams.
Document Analysis: Reviewing existing documents, such as plans, contracts and process descriptions, to find requirements or risks.
Documentation Reviews: The process of gathering a corpus of information and reviewing it to determine accuracy and completeness.
DORA Metrics: Four measures of software delivery performance: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate and time to restore service.
Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition: Five stages of building a skill: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient and expert.
Duration: The total number of work periods required to complete an activity or work breakdown structure component, expressed in hours, days, or weeks. See also effort.
Duration Estimates: Estimates of how many work periods an activity is likely to take, often given as a range.
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM): An agile delivery framework that fixes time and cost and varies scope, using MoSCoW prioritization.

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E

EAC Formulas: Common ways to forecast the estimate at completion: BAC / CPI when current cost performance is expected to continue; AC + (BAC – EV) when past variances were one-off; AC + bottom-up ETC when the original estimate was flawed; AC + (BAC – EV) / (CPI x SPI) when both cost and schedule affect the remaining work.
Early Finish Date (EF): In the critical path method, the earliest possible point in time when the uncompleted portions of a schedule activity can finish based on the schedule network logic, the data date, and any schedule constraints. See also early start date, late start date, late finish date, and schedule network analysis.
Early Start Date (ES): In the critical path method, the earliest possible point in time when the uncompleted portions of a schedule activity can start based on the schedule network logic, the data date, and any schedule constraints. See also early finish date, late finish date, late start date, and schedule network analysis.
Early Termination: An adaptive contract clause that lets the buyer end the contract early once enough value has been delivered, usually for an agreed fee.
Earned Value Analysis (EVA): An analysis method that uses a set of measures associated with scope, schedule, and cost to determine the cost and schedule performance of a project
Earned Value (EV): The measure of work performed expressed in terms of the budget authorized for that work. See also actual cost (AC), budget at completion (BAC), estimate at completion (EAC), estimate to complete (ETC), and planned value (PV).
Earned Value Management (EVM): A method that combines scope, schedule and cost measures to assess project performance and progress objectively.
Economic Value Added (EVA): Whether a project returns more than the cost of the money used to fund it: net operating profit after tax minus the cost of capital. Not the same as earned value analysis.
Effort: The number of labor units required to complete a schedule activity or work breakdown structure component, often expressed in hours, days, or weeks. See also duration.
Elicitation: The activity of drawing out information from stakeholders and other sources for the purpose of further understanding the needs of the business, addressing a problem or opportunity, and determining stakeholder preferences and conditions for the solution that will address those needs.
Embed Quality Into Processes and Deliverables: PMBOK 8 principle: build quality into how the work is done and what is produced, so outcomes consistently meet the target quality and stakeholder needs.
Emergent Risk: A risk that arises that could not have been identified earlier.
Emotional Intelligence: The ability to identify, assess, and manage the personal emotions of oneself and other people, as well as the collective emotions of groups of people.
Enterprise Agility: An organization’s ability to sense and respond quickly to change across strategy, structures, processes and people.
Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEFs): Conditions, not under the immediate control of the team, that influence, constrain, or direct the portfolio, program, or project.
Enterprise Risk Management: An approach to managing risk that reflects the organization’s culture, capability, and strategy to create and sustain value.
Epic: A large, related body of work intended to hierarchically organize a set of requirements and deliver specific business outcomes.
Estimate: A quantitative assessment of the likely amount or outcome of a variable, such as project costs, resources, effort, or durations.
Estimate Activity Durations: The process of estimating the number of work periods needed to complete individual activities with the estimated resources.
Estimate Activity Resources: The process of estimating team resources and the type and quantities of material, equipment, and supplies necessary to perform project work.
Estimate at Completion (EAC): The expected total cost of completing all work expressed as the sum of the actual cost to date and the estimate to complete. See also actual cost (AC), budget at completion (BAC), earned value (EV), estimate to complete (ETC), and planned value (PV).
Estimate Costs: The process of developing an approximation of the monetary resources needed to complete project work.
Estimate to Complete (ETC): The expected cost to finish all the remaining project work. See also actual cost (AC), budget at completion (BAC), earned value (EV), estimate at completion (EAC), and planned value (PV).
Estimating Methods: Methods used to develop an approximation of work, time, or cost on a project
Execute: Directing, managing, performing, and accomplishing the project work; providing the deliverables; and providing work performance information.
Executing Focus Area: The processes that carry out the planned work to deliver the project’s outputs. The plan can be changed whenever a change would improve the value delivered.
Executing Process Group: Those processes performed to complete the work defined in the project management plan to satisfy the project requirements.
Expectancy Theory: Vroom’s idea that people work hard when they believe their effort will lead to a result they value and will be rewarded.
Expected Monetary Value (EMV): The estimated value of an outcome expressed in monetary terms.
Expert Judgment: Advice from people or groups with specialized knowledge, skills or training in the area concerned.
Explicit Knowledge: Knowledge that can be codified using symbols such as words, numbers, and pictures.
External Dependency: A relationship between project activities and non-project activities.
Extreme Programming (XP): An agile software method built on practices such as pair programming, test-driven development, continuous integration and frequent small releases.
Extrinsic Motivation: Motivation from outside rewards, such as pay, bonuses and promotions.

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F

Facilitation: Running group sessions, such as workshops, so that everyone takes part and the group reaches decisions or solutions.
Fail Fast: Trying ideas quickly and cheaply so problems are found early, when they are cheaper to fix.
Failure Costs: Costs of nonconformance. Internal failure costs are found by the project (rework, scrap). External failure costs are found by the customer (warranty work, liabilities, lost business).
Fallback Plan: A backup plan used if the contingency plan doesn’t work.
Fast Tracking: A schedule compression technique in which activities or phases normally done in sequence are performed in parallel for at least a portion of their duration. See also crashing and schedule compression.
Feasibility Analysis: A study that produces a potential recommendation to address business needs. It examines feasibility using one or more of the following variables: operational, technology/system, cost-effectiveness, and timeliness of the potential solution.
Feature: A set of related requirements or functionalities that provides value to an organization.
Feature-Driven Development (FDD): A lightweight agile method that plans, designs and builds the product feature by feature, based on what clients value.
Fee: Represents profit as a component of compensation to a seller.
Final Report: A summary of project performance prepared at closure: scope, quality, cost, schedule, benefits achieved and the reasons for any variances.
Finance Performance Domain: PMBOK 8 domain for planning financial management, estimating costs, developing the budget, and monitoring and controlling finances. It replaces the older cost management area.
Financial Management Plan: PMBOK 8’s part of the project management plan that explains how costs will be planned, structured and controlled. It replaces the cost management plan.
Finish Date: A point in time associated with a schedule activity’s completion. Usually qualified by one of the following: actual, planned, estimated, scheduled, early, late, baseline, target, or current.
Finish-to-Finish (FF): A dependency in which an activity cannot finish until another activity has finished.
Finish-to-Start (FS): A dependency in which the next activity cannot start until the previous one finishes. It is the most common type.
Firm-Fixed-Price Contract (FFP): A type of fixed-price contract where the buyer pays the seller a set amount (as defined by the contract), regardless of the seller’s costs.
Fishbone diagram: See Cause and Effect Diagram.
Fist of Five: A quick way to check agreement: each person shows zero to five fingers. A fist means no support and five means full support. Low scores are discussed before moving on.
Fixed Costs: Costs that stay the same however much work is done, such as setup costs and rent.
Fixed Duration: A type of activity where the length of time required to complete the activity remains constant regardless of the number of people or resources assigned to the activity.
Fixed Formula Method: A method of estimating earned value in which a specified percentage of the budget value of a work package is assigned to the start milestone and the remaining percentage is assigned when the work package is complete. See also weighted milestone method.
Fixed-Price Contract: An agreement that sets the fee that will be paid for a defined scope of work regardless of the cost or effort to deliver it.
Fixed-Price Work Packages: An adaptive contract in which each work package has its own fixed price, so scope can change by re-estimating packages.
Fixed-Price-Incentive-Fee Contract (FPIF): A type of contract where the buyer pays the seller a set amount (as defined by the contract) and the seller can earn an additional amount if the seller meets defined performance criteria.
Fixed-Price-with-Economic-Price-Adjustment Contract (FPEPA): A fixed-price contract, but with a special provision allowing for predefined final adjustments to the contract price due to changed conditions such as inflation changes or cost increases (or decreases) for specific commodities.
Float: Also called slack. See total float and free float.
Flow: The measure of how efficiently work moves through a given process or framework
Flow Metrics: Measures of how efficiently work moves through a process, such as throughput, work in progress and cycle time.
Flowchart: The depiction in a diagram format of the inputs, process actions, and outputs of one or more processes within a system.
Focus Groups: A moderated discussion with selected stakeholders and subject matter experts to learn their expectations and attitudes about a product or result.
Focus on Value: PMBOK 8 principle: keep checking and adjusting the project’s alignment with business objectives and intended benefits. Value per unit of investment is the ultimate sign of success.
Force/Direct: A conflict technique: one view is pushed through at the expense of others, usually using power. It is a win-lose outcome.
Forecast: An estimate or prediction of conditions and events in the project’s future based on information and knowledge available at the time of the forecast.
Forming: Tuckman stage 1: the team meets, learns about the project and their roles. Members tend to be polite and independent.
Forward Pass: A critical path method technique for calculating the early start and early finish dates by working forward through the schedule model from the project start date or a given point in time. See also backward pass.
Framework: A basic structure of ideas or practices that supports an approach, such as Scrum or SAFe.
Free Float: How long an activity can be delayed without delaying the early start of the next activity.
Function Point: An estimate of the amount of business functionality in an information system, used to calculate the functional size measurement of a software system
Functional Manager: The manager of a department who owns its staff and resources and assigns people to projects. Also called a resource manager.
Functional Organization: A structure in which staff are grouped by specialty under functional managers. The project manager has little or no authority.
Functional Requirements: Requirements that describe what the product must do, such as its actions, processes, data and interactions.
Funding Limit Reconciliation: Comparing planned spending with the limits on available funding, and rescheduling work if needed so spending stays within those limits.
Funding Strategy: How a project will get its money, from one or more sources such as internal budgets, a lump sum, staged releases, external investment, grants or crowdfunding.

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G

Gantt chart: A bar chart of schedule information where activities are listed on the vertical axis, dates are shown on the horizontal axis, and activity durations are shown as horizontal bars placed according to start and finish dates.
Generalizing Specialist: A person with deep expertise in one area plus broad skills and a willingness to help in other areas.
Goal Question Metric (GQM): A measurement approach: set goals, ask questions that show whether each goal is met, then choose metrics that answer the questions.
Go/No-Go Decision: The process of determining if an initiative should continue or be stopped. This process usually involves analysis of the current state of the initiative.
Governance: The framework for directing and enabling an organization through its established policies, practices, and other relevant documentation.
Governance Performance Domain: PMBOK 8 domain for authorizing, directing and integrating the project: starting it, aligning plans, sourcing strategy, managing execution, quality assurance, knowledge, performance, changes and closure.
Grade: A category or rank used to distinguish items that have the same functional use but do not share the same requirements for quality.
Graduated Fixed-Price Contract: An adaptive contract in which buyer and seller share risk and reward: the seller earns a higher rate for delivering early and a lower rate for delivering late.
Green Human Resource Management: People management practices that support sustainability, such as reducing travel and waste and improving the environmental performance of the team’s work.
Ground Rules: Clear expectations of acceptable behavior agreed by the team, often written into the team charter.
Gulf of Evaluation: How well something helps a person understand how to interpret it and interact with it. A wide gulf means the feedback is hard to understand.
Gulf of Execution: How well something matches what a person intends to do with it. A wide gulf means it is hard to do what you want.

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H

Halo Effect: Assuming that someone who is good at one thing will be good at another, for example that a great engineer will be a great project manager.
Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory: Hygiene factors, such as pay and working conditions, prevent dissatisfaction but don’t motivate. Motivators, such as responsibility, recognition and growth, actually motivate.
Hierarchy Chart: A chart that begins with high-level information that is progressively decomposed into lower levels of detail
Histogram: A bar chart that shows the graphical representation of numerical data.
Historical Information: Documents and data on prior projects including project files, records, correspondence, closed contracts, and closed projects.
Historical Information Review: Studying information from past projects, such as actual costs, durations and lessons learned, to inform estimates and plans.
Hybrid Approach: A combination of elements from both adaptive and predictive approaches that is useful when there is uncertainty or risk around the requirements.

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I

Identify Risks: The process of identifying individual risks as well as sources of overall risk and documenting their characteristics.
Identify Stakeholders: The process of identifying project stakeholders regularly and analyzing and documenting relevant information regarding their interests, involvement, interdependencies, influence, and potential impact on project success.
Impact: A measure of the effect of a risk on one or more objectives if it occurs.
Impact Mapping: A strategic planning method that serves as a visual roadmap for the organization during product development
Impediment: An obstacle that prevents the team from achieving its objectives. Also known as a blocker.
Implement Risk Responses: The process of implementing agreed-upon risk response plans.
Imposed Date: A fixed date imposed on a schedule activity or schedule milestone, usually in the form of a “start no earlier than” and “finish no later than” date.
Incentive Fee: A set of financial incentives related to cost, schedule, or technical performance of the seller.
Incentives: Rewards in a contract that encourage the seller to meet the buyer’s goals, such as finishing early or under budget.
Increment: A working, tested and accepted piece of the product that adds to everything delivered so far.
Incremental Approach: An adaptive development approach in which the deliverable is produced successively, adding functionality until the deliverable contains the necessary and sufficient capability to be considered complete.
Incremental Life Cycle: An adaptive project life cycle in which the deliverable is produced through a series of iterations that successively add functionality within a predetermined time frame. The deliverable contains the necessary and sufficient capability to be considered complete only after the final iteration.
Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ): A contract that provides for an indefinite quantity of goods or services, with a stated lower and upper limit, within a fixed time period
Independent Cost Estimate: The buyer’s own estimate, or one from an outside expert, of what the work should cost. It is used to check sellers’ prices.
Independent Estimates: A process of using a third party to obtain and analyze information to support prediction of cost, schedule, or other items.
Indirect Costs: Overhead costs shared across several projects, such as taxes, fringe benefits and office services.
Individual and Team Assessments: Tools such as surveys, interviews and ability tests that give insight into team members’ strengths, weaknesses, preferences and how they work together.
Influence Diagram: A graphical representation of situations showing causal influences, time ordering of events, and other relationships among variables and outcomes.
Information: Organized or structured data, processed for a specific purpose to make it meaningful, valuable, and useful in specific contexts.
Information Management: Creating, storing, retrieving and sharing project information so the right people get it at the right time, often through a project management information system.
Information Management Systems: Facilities, processes, and procedures used to collect, store, and distribute information between producers and consumers of information in physical or electronic format.
Information Radiator: A visible, physical display that provides information to the rest of the organization, enabling timely knowledge sharing.
Initiating Focus Area: The processes that define a new project or phase and get the authorization to start it.
Initiating Process Group: Those processes performed to define a new project or a new phase of an existing project by obtaining authorization to start the project or phase.
Input: Any item, whether internal or external to the project, which is required by a process before that process proceeds. May be an output from a predecessor process.
Inspection: Examining a work product to check that it meets documented standards. Also called a review, peer review, audit or walkthrough.
Integrate and Align Project Plans: PMBOK 8 Governance process that combines all subsidiary plans and baselines into one coordinated project management plan.
Integrate Sustainability Within All Project Areas: PMBOK 8 principle: build environmental, social and economic sustainability into every project area and phase. The project manager, team and sponsor share accountability for it.
Integrated Change Control: Reviewing every change request together and approving, deferring or rejecting it, then managing approved changes to deliverables, documents and the project management plan.
Integration: The coordination of all project elements so that the elements work together effectively, ensuring objectives are met within the goals of the project.
Interactive Communication: Two or more parties exchange information in real time, as in meetings, calls and video conferences. It is the best way to make sure a message is understood.
Internal Dependency: A relationship between two or more project activities
Internal Rate of Return (IRR): The interest rate at which a project’s NPV is zero. The higher the IRR, the better.
Interpersonal and Team Skills: Skills used to effectively lead and interact with team members and other stakeholders.
Interpersonal Skills: Skills used to establish and maintain relationships with other people.
Interviews: Talking directly with stakeholders, formally or informally, to gather information such as requirements or risks.
Intrinsic Motivation: Motivation that comes from within a person, such as purpose, achievement and personal growth.
Inverted Triangle Model: The agile view of the triple constraint: time and cost are fixed, and scope varies to deliver the most value within them.
Invitation for Bid (IFB): Generally, this term is equivalent to request for proposal. However, in some application areas, it may have a narrower or more specific meaning.
I-Shaped: A person with one deep specialization and little interest or skill in the rest of the team’s work.
Issue: A current condition or situation that may have an impact on one or more objectives.
Issue Log: A project document where information about issues is recorded and monitored.
Iteration: A short cycle of development during which a product or deliverable is released or further matured. See also sprint.
Iteration Burndown Chart: A burndown chart for a single iteration that tracks the work remaining in the iteration backlog day by day.
Iteration Plan: A detailed plan for the current iteration. See also project management plan.
Iteration Planning: A meeting to clarify the details of the backlog items, acceptance criteria, and work effort required to meet an upcoming iteration commitment
Iteration Review: A meeting held at the end of an iteration to demonstrate the work that was accomplished during the iteration.
Iterative Approach: A development approach that focuses on an initial, simplified implementation then progressively elaborates, adding to the feature set until the final deliverable is complete.
Iterative Life Cycle: A project life cycle where the project scope is generally determined early in the project life cycle, but time and cost estimates are routinely modified as the project team’s understanding of the product increases. Iterations develop the product through a series of repeated cycles, while increments successively add to the functionality of the product.

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J

Just in Time (JIT): Having materials arrive only when they are needed, keeping inventory near zero. It needs high quality to work.

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K

Kaizen: Continuous improvement through many small changes, often made in short improvement events.
Kaizen Events: Short, focused improvement workshops in which a team improves one part of the system.
Kanban Board: A visualization tool that shows work in progress to help identify bottlenecks and overcommitments, thereby allowing the team to optimize the workflow.
Kanban Method: An agile approach for knowledge work, based on the original kanban inventory system, that visualizes work, limits WIP and manages flow.
Kano Model: A model that classifies features by how they affect customer satisfaction: basic (expected), performance (more is better), excitement (delighters) and indifferent.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Measurable values that show how well objectives are being met.
Kickoff Meeting: A gathering of team members and other key stakeholders at the beginning of a project to formally set expectations, gain a common understanding, and commence work.
Knowledge: A mixture of experience, values and beliefs, contextual information, intuition, and insight that people use to make sense of new experiences and information.
Knowledge Management: Making sure the existing knowledge of the team and stakeholders is used, and that new knowledge is created and shared for the project and organization.

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L

Lag: The amount of time whereby a successor activity will be delayed with respect to a predecessor activity. See also lead.
Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS): A framework that scales Scrum to many teams working on one product, while keeping Scrum’s original purpose.
Last Responsible Moment: The concept of deferring a decision to allow the team to consider multiple options until the cost of further delay would exceed the benefit
Late Finish Date (LF): In the critical path method, the latest possible point in time when the uncompleted portions of a schedule activity can finish based on the schedule network logic, the project completion date, and any schedule constraints. See also early finish date, early start date, late start date, and schedule network analysis.
Late Start Date (LS): In the critical path method, the latest possible point in time when the uncompleted portions of a schedule activity can start based on the schedule network logic, the project completion date, and any schedule constraints. See also early finish date, late finish date, early start date, and schedule network analysis.
Law of Diminishing Returns: After a certain point, adding more input, such as more people, produces less and less extra output.
Lead: The amount of time whereby a successor activity can be advanced with respect to a predecessor activity. See also lag.
Lead Time: The time between a customer request and the actual delivery
Lead Time Chart: A diagram showing the trend over time of the average lead time of the items completed in work
Leadership: Guiding, motivating and directing people to achieve goals, mainly through influence rather than authority.
Leadership vs Management: Management directs people using the authority of the position and focuses on processes and efficiency. Leadership guides people through influence and focuses on vision, relationships and motivation.
Leading and Lagging Indicators: A leading indicator predicts future performance, such as the number of open risks. A lagging indicator measures past results, such as deliverables completed or money spent.
Lean Software Development: Lean manufacturing principles adapted to software, such as eliminating waste, building in quality and delivering fast.
Lean Startup: An approach of building minimum viable products, testing assumptions with customers quickly and using what is learned to guide the product.
Lean Startup Canvas: A one-page template designed to communicate a business plan with key stakeholders in an efficient and effective manner
Lessons Learned: The knowledge gained during a project that shows how project events were addressed or should be addressed in the future for the purpose of improving future performance.
Lessons Learned Register: A project document or repository used to record knowledge gained during a project, phase, or iteration so that it can be used to improve future performance for the team and the organization.
Lessons Learned Repository: A store of historical information about lessons learned in projects.
Level of Effort (LOE): An activity that does not produce definitive end products and is measured by the passage of time. See also apportioned effort and discrete effort.
Life Cycle: See project life cycle.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): A tool used to evaluate the total environmental impact of a product, process, or system
Little’s Law: Average cycle time = average work in progress / average throughput. Less WIP means work finishes faster.
Log: A document used to record and describe or denote selected items identified during execution of a process or activity. Usually used with a modifier, such as issue, change, issue, or assumption.
Logical Relationship: A dependency between two activities or between an activity and a milestone. See also finish-to-finish, finish-to-start, start-to-finish, and start-to-start.
Low-Code/No-Code (LCNC): Platforms that let people build applications mainly through configuration and visual tools rather than hand-coding.

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M

Machine Learning (ML): A branch of artificial intelligence in which systems learn patterns from data and improve their predictions without being explicitly programmed.
Majority: A decision supported by more than half of the group.
Make-or-Buy Analysis: The decision-making process of gathering and organizing data about product requirements and analyzing them against available alternatives, including the purchase or internal manufacture of the product.
Make-or-Buy Decisions: Decisions made regarding the external purchase or internal manufacture of a product.
Manage Communications: Manage Communications is the process of ensuring timely and appropriate collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, monitoring, and the ultimate disposition of project information.
Manage Project Knowledge: The process of using existing knowledge and creating new knowledge to achieve the project’s objectives and contribute to organizational learning.
Manage Quality: The process of translating the quality management plan into executable quality activities that incorporate the organization’s quality policies into the project.
Manage Quality Assurance: PMBOK 8 Governance process that turns the quality management plan into quality activities, so the processes used are likely to produce deliverables that meet the quality objectives.
Manage Stakeholder Engagement: The process of communicating and working with stakeholders to meet their needs and expectations, address issues, and foster appropriate stakeholder involvement.
Manage Team: The process of tracking team member performance, providing feedback, resolving issues, and managing team changes to optimize project performance.
Management Reserve: Time or money that management sets aside in addition to the schedule or cost baseline and releases for unforeseen work that is within the scope of the portfolio, program, or project. See also contingency reserve and project budget.
Management Skills: The ability to plan, organize, direct, and control individuals or groups of people to achieve specific goals.
Mandatory Dependency: A relationship that is contractually required or inherent in the nature of the work.
Market Research: Studying the industry and potential sellers’ capabilities to refine procurement decisions.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: People are motivated by five levels of needs, from lowest to highest: physiological, safety, social (belonging), esteem and self-actualization. Lower needs must be met first.
Master Schedule: A summary-level project schedule that identifies the major deliverables and work breakdown structure components and key schedule milestones. See also milestone schedule.
Matrix Diagrams: A quality management and control tool used to perform data analysis within the organizational structure created in the matrix. The matrix diagram seeks to show the strength of relationships between factors, causes, and objectives that exist between the rows and columns that form the matrix.
Matrix Organization: A structure in which staff report to both a functional manager and a project manager. In a weak matrix the project manager has little authority, in a balanced matrix shared authority, and in a strong matrix high authority.
McClelland’s Theory of Needs: People are mainly motivated by one of three needs: achievement, affiliation or power. Also called achievement theory.
Measurement Performance Domain: The performance domain that addresses activities and functions associated with assessing project performance and taking appropriate actions to maintain acceptable performance
Measures of Performance: Measures that characterize physical or functional attributes relating to system operation
Method: A means for achieving an outcome, output, result, or project deliverable.
Methodology: A system of practices, techniques, procedures, and rules used by those who work in a discipline.
Milestone: A significant point or event in a portfolio, program, or project.
Milestone List: A list of all project milestones, showing whether each is mandatory (for example, required by contract) or optional.
Milestone Schedule: A type of schedule that presents milestones with planned dates.
Mind Mapping: Arranging ideas around a central topic in a diagram to show how they relate and to find common ground.
Minimum Business Increment (MBI): The smallest piece of functionality that delivers value to the business, used to realize value quickly.
Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF): The smallest piece of functionality that delivers value to customers on its own.
Minimum Marketable Product (MMP): The smallest version of a product with enough features to sell or release to the market.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP): A concept used to define the scope of the first release of a solution to customers by identifying the fewest number of features or requirements that would deliver value.
Mobbing: Several team members working together at the same time on one work item.
Model: A visual representation of information, both abstract and specific, that operates under a set of guidelines in order to efficiently arrange and convey a lot of information in an efficient manner.
Modeling: Creating simplified representations of systems, solutions, or deliverables such as prototypes, diagrams, or storyboards.
Monitor: Collect project performance data, produce performance measures, and report and disseminate performance information.
Monitor and Control Project Work: The process of tracking, reviewing, and reporting overall progress to meet the performance objectives defined in the project management plan.
Monitor Communications: The process of ensuring that the information needs of the project and its stakeholders are met.
Monitor Risks: The process of monitoring the implementation of agreed-upon risk response plans, tracking identified risks, identifying and analyzing new risks, and evaluating risk process effectiveness throughout the project.
Monitor Stakeholder Engagement: The process of monitoring project stakeholder relationships, and tailoring strategies for engaging stakeholders through the modification of engagement strategies and plans.
Monitoring and Controlling Focus Area: The processes that track, review and regulate progress and performance, find where the plan needs to change and start those changes.
Monitoring and Controlling Process Group: Those processes required to track, review, and regulate the progress and performance of the project; identify any areas in which changes to the plan are required; and initiate the corresponding changes.
Monte Carlo Simulation: A method of identifying the potential impacts of risk and uncertainty using multiple iterations of a computer model to develop a probability distribution of a range of outcomes that could result from a decision or course of action.
Mood Chart: A visualization chart for tracking moods or reactions to identify areas for improvement
MoSCoW: A prioritization method that sorts requirements into Must have, Should have, Could have and Won’t have (this time).
Most Likely Duration: An estimate of the most probable activity duration that takes into account all of the known variables that could affect performance. See also optimistic duration and pessimistic duration.
Motivation Models: Theories that explain why people act as they do, such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Herzberg’s two-factor theory, McClelland’s theory of needs and Theory X, Y and Z.
Multicriteria Decision Analysis: Using a decision matrix with weighted criteria, such as risk, cost and value, to evaluate and rank options in a systematic way.
Multipoint Estimating: A method used to estimate cost or duration by applying an average or weighted average of optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely estimates when there is uncertainty with the individual activity estimates.

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N

Natural Language Processing (NLP): A branch of artificial intelligence that lets computers understand and generate human language, for example to summarize meetings or draft reports.
Near-Critical Activity: An activity with a total float that is deemed to be low based on expert judgment. See also critical path, free float, near-critical path, and total float.
Near-Critical Path: A path whose duration is close to the critical path. The more near-critical paths there are, the higher the schedule risk.
Negative Float: Float below zero, meaning the schedule can’t meet a required date unless it is compressed.
Negotiation: Discussion between parties to reach an agreement. The best outcome is win-win.
Net Present Value (NPV): The present value of all benefits minus the present value of all costs over time. Choose the highest NPV. A positive NPV is good. It already allows for the number of years.
Net Promoter Score®: An index that measures the willingness of customers to recommend an organization’s products or services to others
Network: See project schedule network diagram.
Network Logic: All activity dependencies in a project schedule network diagram. See also early finish date, early start date, late finish date, late start date, and network path.
Network Path: A sequence of activities connected by logical relationships in a project schedule network diagram. See also early finish date, early start date, late finish date, late start date, and network logic.
Networking: Establishing connections and relationships with other people from the same or other organizations.
Node: A point at which dependency lines connect on a schedule network diagram. See also precedence diagramming method and project schedule network diagram.
Nominal Group Technique: Brainstorming followed by a vote to rank the most useful ideas for further discussion or prioritization.
Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA): A contract that requires the parties to keep shared information confidential.
Nonfunctional Requirements: Requirements that describe the qualities the product needs to be effective, such as reliability, security, performance, safety and service level.
Nonverbal Communication: Communicating without words, such as through body language, facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice. It carries a large share of a message’s meaning.
Norming: Tuckman stage 3: the team agrees how to work together, adjusts habits and starts to trust each other.
Not-to-Exceed Time and Material: A time and material contract with a cap on the total cost.

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O

Objective: Something toward which work is to be directed—a strategic position to be attained, a purpose to be achieved, a result to be obtained, a product to be produced, or a service to be performed.
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): A goal-setting framework: objectives say what to achieve and measurable key results show whether it was achieved.
Observation/Conversation: Watching people do their work (job shadowing) to understand how they work and find requirements they might not mention.
Opportunity: A risk that would have a positive effect on one or more portfolio, program, or project objectives.
Opportunity Cost: The value of the best alternative you give up when you choose one option, such as the benefit of the project not selected.
Optimistic Duration: An estimate of the shortest activity duration that takes into account all of the known variables that could affect performance. See also most likely duration and pessimistic duration.
Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS): A hierarchical representation of the project organization that illustrates the relationship between project activities and the organizational units that will perform those activities. See also resource breakdown structure, risk breakdown structure, and work breakdown structure (WBS).
Organizational Change Management (OCM): A structured approach for moving individuals, groups and organizations from the current state to a future state that delivers the intended business benefits.
Organizational Cultural Intelligence: An organization’s ability to work effectively in culturally diverse, complex situations.
Organizational Knowledge Repositories: The organization’s stores of knowledge, such as lessons learned, historical project files, configuration libraries and financial records.
Organizational Learning: A discipline concerned with the way individuals, groups, and organizations develop knowledge.
Organizational Process Assets (OPAs): Plans, processes, policies, procedures, and knowledge bases specific to and used by the performing organization.
Organizational Project Management Maturity: The level of an organization’s ability to deliver the desired strategic outcomes in a predictable, controllable, and reliable manner.
Organizational Project Management (OPM): A framework that links portfolio, program and project management with the organization’s strategy, so the work delivers strategic goals.
Organizational Theory: The study of how people, teams and organizations behave, which helps project managers motivate people and work within structures.
Osmotic Communication: Means of receiving information without direct communication by overhearing and through nonverbal cues
Outcome: An end result or consequence of a process or project.
Output: A product, result, or service generated by a process. May be an input to a successor process.
Overall Project Risk: The effect of uncertainty on the project as a whole, arising from all sources of uncertainty including individual risks, representing the exposure of stakeholders to the implications of variations in project outcome, both positive and negative.
Overall Risk: The effect of uncertainty on the portfolio, program, or project as a whole.

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P

Pair Programming: Two people working on the same code at the same time, one writing and one reviewing. Pairing is the same idea for any kind of work.
Pairing: Two team members working on the same work item at the same time. Pair programming is pairing applied to code.
Parametric Estimating: An estimating technique in which an algorithm is used to calculate cost or duration based on historical data and project parameters. See also analogous estimating, bottom-up estimating, program evaluation and review technique (PERT), and multipoint estimating.
Path Convergence: A relationship in which a schedule activity has more than one predecessor. See also path divergence, predecessor activity, and successor activity.
Path Divergence: A relationship in which a schedule activity has more than one successor. See also path convergence, predecessor activity, and successor activity.
Payback Period: How long it takes to earn back the money invested in a project. The shorter, the better.
Percent Complete: An estimate expressed as a percent of the amount of work that has been completed on an activity or a work breakdown structure component.
Perform Integrated Change Control: The process of reviewing all change requests; approving changes and managing changes to deliverables, organizational process assets, project documents, and the project management plan; and communicating the decisions.
Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis: The process of prioritizing individual project risks for further analysis or action by assessing their probability of occurrence and impact as well as other characteristics.
Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis: The process of numerically analyzing the combined effect of identified individual project risks and other sources of uncertainty on overall project objectives.
Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB): Integrated scope, schedule, and cost baselines used for comparison to manage, measure, and control project execution. See also baseline, cost baseline, schedule baseline, and scope baseline.
Performance Reviews: A technique that is used to measure, compare, and analyze actual performance of work in progress on the project against the baseline.
Performing: Tuckman stage 4: the team works well together, solves problems smoothly and is highly productive.
Performing Organization: An enterprise whose personnel are the most directly involved in doing the work of the program or project.
Personas: Fictional profiles of typical users that represent a group of real users, used to understand their needs when designing a product.
Pessimistic Duration: An estimate of the longest activity duration that takes into account all of the known variables that could affect performance. See also most likely duration and optimistic duration.
PESTLE: A prompt list for spotting risks in the wider environment: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental.
PESTLE Analysis: A strategic planning tool used to systematically evaluate political, economic, sociocultural, technological, legal, and environmental factors. These factors provide a view of the project’s external operating environment and indicate potential opportunities and threats.
Phase: See project phase.
Phase Gate: A review at the end of a phase in which a decision is made to continue to the next phase, to continue with modification, or to end a program or project. See also project phase.
Physical Resource Assignments: A record of the materials, equipment, supplies and locations that will be used during the project.
Pivot: A planned change of direction to test a new hypothesis about the product or strategy.
Plan: A proposed means of accomplishing something
Plan Communications Management: The process of developing an appropriate approach and plan for project communication activities based on the information needs of each stakeholder or group, available organizational assets, and the needs of the project.
Plan Cost Management: The process of defining how the project costs will be estimated, budgeted, managed, monitored, and controlled.
Plan Procurement Management: The process of documenting project procurement decisions, specifying the approach, and identifying potential sellers.
Plan Quality Management: The process of identifying quality requirements and/or standards for the project and its deliverables, and documenting how the project will demonstrate compliance with quality requirements and/or standards.
Plan Resource Management: The process of defining how to estimate, acquire, manage, and utilize physical and team resources.
Plan Risk Management: The process of defining how to conduct risk management activities for a project.
Plan Risk Responses: The process of developing options, selecting strategies, and agreeing on actions to address overall project risk exposure, as well as to treat individual project risks.
Plan Schedule Management: The process of establishing the policies, procedures, and documentation for planning, developing, managing, executing, and controlling the project schedule.
Plan Scope Management: The process of creating a scope management plan that documents how the project and product scope will be defined, validated, and controlled.
Plan Sourcing Strategy: PMBOK 8 Governance process that decides which parts of the project will be done in-house, outsourced, or both, and why.
Plan Stakeholder Engagement: The process of developing approaches to involve project stakeholders, based on their needs, expectations, interests, and potential impact on the project.
Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA): An iterative management method used in organizations to facilitate the control and continual improvement of processes and products.
Planned Value (PV): The authorized budget assigned to scheduled work. See also actual cost (AC), budget at completion (BAC), earned value (EV), estimate at completion (EAC), and estimate to complete (ETC).
Planning Focus Area: The processes that set the total scope, refine the objectives and work out the course of action needed to reach them.
Planning Package: A work breakdown structure component below the control account with known work content but without detailed schedule activities. See also control account.
Planning Performance Domain: The performance domain that addresses activities and functions associated with the initial, ongoing, and evolving organization and coordination necessary for delivering project deliverables and results
Planning Poker: An agile estimating game. Team members privately pick a card (often a Fibonacci number), reveal them together, discuss the highest and lowest, and re-vote until they agree.
Planning Process Group: Those processes required to establish the scope of the project, refine the objectives, and define the course of action required to attain the objectives that the project was undertaken to achieve.
Plurality: A decision made by the largest group of voters, even if they are not a majority.
Point of Total Assumption (PTA): In a fixed-price incentive contract, the cost above which the seller pays for all overruns: PTA = (Ceiling Price – Target Price) / Buyer’s Share Ratio + Target Cost.
Policy: A structured pattern of actions adopted by an organization such that the organization’s policy can be explained as a set of basic principles that govern the organization’s conduct.
Political Awareness: Understanding the power relationships, formal and informal, inside and around the organization, and using that understanding to work with them.
Portfolio: Projects, programs, subsidiary portfolios, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives. See also program and project.
Portfolio Balancing: The process of optimizing the mix of portfolio components to further the strategic objectives of the organization.
Portfolio Charter: A document issued by a sponsor that authorizes and specifies the portfolio structure and links the portfolio to the organization’s strategic objectives. See also program charter and project charter.
Portfolio Kanban: A kanban board for managing the flow of initiatives or projects at the portfolio level.
Portfolio Management: The centralized management of one or more portfolios to achieve strategic objectives.
Portfolio Management Plan: A document that specifies how a portfolio will be organized, monitored, and controlled. See also program management plan and project management plan.
Portfolio Manager: The person or group assigned by the performing organization to establish, balance, monitor, and control portfolio components in order to achieve strategic business objectives. See also program manager and project manager.
Power/Interest Grid: A grid that groups stakeholders by their power and interest: manage closely (high, high), keep satisfied (high power), keep informed (high interest) or monitor (low, low).
Practice: A specific type of professional or management activity that contributes to the execution of a process and that may employ one or more techniques and tools.
Preassignment: Team members chosen in advance, for example named in a proposal or the charter, or needed for their specific expertise.
Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM): A way of drawing the schedule network in which activities are boxes (nodes) linked by dependencies: FS, FF, SS or SF. Also called activity-on-node.
Precedence Relationship: A logical dependency used in the precedence diagramming method.
Precision: Within the quality management system, precision is an assessment of exactness.
Predecessor Activity: An activity that logically comes before a dependent activity in a schedule. See also successor activity and summary activity.
Predictive Analytics: Using historical data, statistics and AI to forecast likely future results, such as delays or cost overruns.
Predictive Approach: A development approach in which the project scope, time, and cost are determined in the early phases of the life cycle.
Predictive Life Cycle: A form of project life cycle in which the project scope, time, and cost are determined in the early phases of the life cycle.
Premortem: Imagining that the project has already failed, then listing the reasons why, so the risks can be addressed in advance.
Present Value (PV): What a future amount of money is worth today: PV = FV / (1 + r)^n. Not to be confused with planned value.
Prevention Costs: A cost of conformance: money spent to prevent defects, such as training, documenting processes, better equipment and time to do things right.
Preventive Action: Work done to make sure future performance stays in line with the plan, before a problem happens.
Prioritization Matrix: A scatter diagram that plots effort against value so as to classify items by priority
Prioritization Schema: Methods used to prioritize portfolio, program, or project components, as well as requirements, risks, features, or other product information
Probabilistic Estimating: A method used to develop a range of estimates along with the associated probabilities within that range
Probability and Impact Matrix: A grid for mapping the probability of occurrence of each risk and its impact on project objectives if that risk occurs. See also risk.
Problem-Solving: A structured way of finding a solution: define the problem, find the root cause, generate and choose solutions, implement them and check the result.
Procedure: An established method of accomplishing a consistent performance or result, a procedure typically can be described as the sequence of steps that will be used to execute a process.
Process: A systematic series of activities directed toward causing an end result such that one or more inputs will be acted upon to create one or more outputs.
Process Analysis: Examining the steps of a process to find problems, constraints and activities that don’t add value, so the process can be improved.
Process Flow: A business analysis model that visually shows the steps taken in a process by a human user as it interacts with an implementation. A set of steps taken by a system can be shown in a similar model as a system flow.
Procurement Audit: A structured review of the whole procurement process, from planning to closing the contract, to record what worked and what didn’t.
Procurement Documentation: All documents used in signing, executing, and closing an agreement. Procurement documentation may include documents predating the project.
Procurement Documents: The documents utilized in bid and proposal activities, which include the buyer’s Invitation for bid, invitation for negotiations, request for information, request for quotation, request for proposal, and seller’s responses.
Procurement Management Plan: A component of the program or project management plan that describes how a team will acquire goods and services from outside of the performing organization. See also project management plan.
Procurement Statement of Work: Describes the procurement item in sufficient detail to allow prospective sellers to determine if they are capable of providing the products, services, or results.
Procurement Strategy: The approach by the buyer to determine the project delivery method and the type of legally binding agreement(s) that should be used to deliver the desired results.
Product: An artifact that is produced, is quantifiable, and can be either an end item in itself or a component item.
Product Analysis: Techniques for questioning a product to define its scope, such as product breakdown, requirements analysis, systems engineering and value engineering.
Product Backlog: The ordered list of everything the product might need, such as features, requirements and user stories. The product owner owns and prioritizes it.
Product Breakdown Structure: A hierarchical structure reflecting a product’s components and deliverables
Product Life Cycle: A series of phases that represent the evolution of a product, from concept through delivery, growth, maturity, and to retirement.
Product Management: The integration of people, data, processes, and business systems to create, maintain, and evolve a product or service throughout its life cycle.
Product Owner: A person responsible for maximizing the value of the product and accountable for the end product.
Product Scope: The features and functions that characterize a product, service, or result.
Product Scope Description: The documented narrative description of the product scope.
Product Team: A long-lasting, cross-functional group responsible for defining, building and evolving a product.
Program: Related projects, subsidiary programs, and program activities managed in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually. See also portfolio and project.
Program Charter: A document issued by a sponsor that authorizes the program management team to use organizational resources to execute the program and links the program to the organization’s strategic objectives. See also portfolio charter and project charter.
Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT): A technique used to estimate project duration through a weighted average of optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely activity durations when there is uncertainty with the individual activity estimates. Its beta-distribution formula weights the most likely value: (O + 4M + P) / 6. See also analogous estimating, bottom-up estimating, parametric estimating, and multipoint estimating.
Program Management: The application of knowledge, skills, and principles to a program to achieve the program objectives and to obtain benefits and control not available by managing program components individually. See also portfolio management and project management.
Program Management Office: A management entity that standardizes the program-related governance processes and facilitates the sharing of resources, methodologies, tools, and techniques to maximize the return on program investments. See also project management office.
Program Management Plan: A document that integrates the program’s subsidiary plans and establishes the management controls and overall plan for integrating and managing the program’s individual components. See also portfolio management plan and project management plan.
Program Manager: The person authorized by the performing organization to lead the team or teams responsible for achieving program objectives. See also portfolio manager and project manager.
Progressive Elaboration: The iterative process of increasing the level of detail in a project management plan as greater amounts of information and more accurate estimates become available. See also rolling wave planning.
Project: A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. See also portfolio and program.
Project Brief: A high-level overview of the goals, deliverables, and processes for the project
Project Budget: The sum of work package cost estimates, contingency reserve, and management reserve. See also contingency reserve and management reserve.
Project Calendar: A calendar that identifies working days and shifts that are available for scheduled activities.
Project Canvas: PMBOK 8 one-page visual summary of a project’s key elements, such as purpose, objectives, milestones, phases, scope, exclusions, stakeholders, risks and resources.
Project Charter: A document issued by the project initiator or sponsor that formally authorizes the existence of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities. See also portfolio charter and program charter.
Project Communications Management: Project Communications Management includes the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, control, monitoring, and ultimate disposition of project information.
Project Cost Management: Project Cost Management includes the processes involved in planning, estimating, budgeting, financing, funding, managing, and controlling costs so the project can be completed within the approved budget.
Project Documents: Documents used to manage the project that are not part of the project management plan, such as the assumption log, issue log, risk register and stakeholder register.
Project Elevator Statement: A short summary of the project’s purpose and value that anyone can explain in about 30 seconds.
Project Exclusions: Items stated as outside the project’s scope. Listing them helps manage stakeholder expectations.
Project Float: How long the whole project can be delayed without missing the completion date set by the customer or management.
Project Funding Requirements: The total and periodic funding a project needs, worked out from the cost baseline. It shows how much money is needed and when, and usually includes the management reserve.
Project Governance: The framework, functions, and processes that guide project management activities in order to meet or exceed target project objectives.
Project Initiation: Launching a process that can result in the authorization of a new project.
Project Integration Management: Project Integration Management includes the processes and activities to identify, define, combine, unify, and coordinate the various processes and project management activities within the Project Management Process Groups.
Project Lead: A person who helps the project team to achieve the project objectives, typically by orchestrating the work of the project
Project Life Cycle: The series of phases that a project passes through from its start to its completion. See also product life cycle.
Project Management: The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. See also portfolio management and program management.
Project Management Body of Knowledge: A term that describes the knowledge within the profession of project management. The project management body of knowledge includes proven traditional practices that are widely applied as well as innovative practices that are emerging in the profession.
Project Management Focus Areas: PMBOK 8’s five groupings of project management processes: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing. They replace the older term “Process Groups” and can repeat in every phase or iteration.
Project Management Information System (PMIS): An information system consisting of the tools and techniques used to gather, integrate, and disseminate the outputs of project management processes.
Project Management Knowledge Area: An identified area of project management defined by its knowledge requirements and described in terms of its component processes, practices, inputs, outputs, tools, and techniques.
Project Management Mindset: The way of thinking described by PMBOK 8’s six principles. The mindset guides the mechanics of project management, such as processes, tools and techniques.
Project Management Office (PMO): A management entity that standardizes the project-related governance processes and facilitates the sharing of resources, methodologies, tools, and techniques to maximize the return on project investments. See also program management office.
Project Management Performance Domain: A group of related processes that are critical to delivering project value. PMBOK 8 has seven that run at the same time and depend on each other: Governance, Scope, Schedule, Finance, Stakeholders, Resources and Risk.
Project Management Plan: The document that describes how the project will be executed, monitored and controlled, and closed. See also portfolio management plan, program management plan, change control plan, communications management plan, cost management plan, iteration plan, procurement management plan, quality management plan, requirements management plan, release plan, resource management plan, risk management plan, schedule management plan, scope management plan, stakeholder engagement plan, and test plan.
Project Management Principles: PMBOK 8’s six principles that shape how project professionals think: Adopt a Holistic View, Focus on Value, Embed Quality Into Processes and Deliverables, Be an Accountable Leader, Integrate Sustainability Within All Project Areas, and Build an Empowered Culture.
Project Management Process Group: A logical grouping of project management inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs. The Project Management Process Groups include initiating processes, planning processes, executing processes, monitoring and controlling processes, and closing processes. Project Management Process Groups are not project phases.
Project Management System: The aggregation of the processes, tools, techniques, methodologies, resources, and procedures to manage a project.
Project Management Team: The members of the project team who are directly involved in project management activities. See also Project Team.
Project Manager (PM): The person assigned by the performing organization to lead the team that is responsible for achieving the project objectives. See also portfolio manager and program manager.
Project Organization Chart: A document that graphically depicts the project team members and their interrelationships for a specific project.
Project Phase: A collection of logically related project activities that culminates in the completion of one or more deliverables. See also phase gate.
Project Procurement Management: Project Procurement Management includes the processes necessary to purchase or acquire products, services, or results needed from outside the project team.
Project Quality Management: Project Quality Management includes the processes for incorporating the organization’s quality policy regarding planning, managing, and controlling project and product quality requirements, in order to meet stakeholders’ expectations.
Project Requirements: The actions, processes or conditions the project itself must meet, such as milestone dates, contract obligations and constraints.
Project Resilience: A project’s ability to absorb the impact of unexpected risks and recover, helped by reserves, flexible processes and an empowered team.
Project Resource Management: Project Resource Management includes the processes to identify, acquire, and manage the resources needed for the successful completion of the project.
Project Review: An event at the end of a phase or project to assess the status, evaluate the value delivered, and determine if the project is ready to move to the next phase or transition to operations
Project Risk Management: Project Risk Management includes the processes of conducting risk management planning, identification, analysis, response planning, response implementation, and monitoring risk on a project.
Project Schedule: An output of a schedule model that presents linked activities with planned dates, durations, milestones, and resources.
Project Schedule Management: Project Schedule Management includes the processes required to manage the timely completion of the project.
Project Schedule Network Diagram: A graphical representation of the logical relationships among the project schedule activities. See also node and precedence diagramming method.
Project Scope: The work performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions.
Project Scope Management: Project Scope Management includes the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully.
Project Scope Statement: The description of the project scope, major deliverables, assumptions, and constraints.
Project Stakeholder Management: Project Stakeholder Management includes the processes required to identify the people, groups, or organizations that could impact or be impacted by the project, to analyze stakeholder expectations and their impact on the project, and to develop appropriate management strategies for effectively engaging stakeholders in project decisions and execution.
Project Success: The shared view of beneficiaries, stakeholders and project participants that the project delivered value worth its effort and cost.
Project Team: A set of individuals who support the project manager in performing the work of the project to achieve its objectives. See also Project Management Team.
Project Team Assignments: A record of who is on the team and their roles and responsibilities, often shown in a team directory, organization chart or responsibility assignment matrix.
Project Team Directory: A documented list of project team members, their project roles, and communication information.
Project Vision Statement: A concise, high-level description of the project that states the purpose and inspires the team to contribute to the project
Project Work Performance Domain: The performance domain that addresses activities and functions associated with establishing project processes, managing physical resources, and fostering a learning environment
Projectized Organization: An organizational structure in which the project manager has full authority to assign work and apply resources. See also functional organization and matrix organization.
Project-Oriented Organization: A structure organized around projects, where the project manager has high to near-total authority over resources and budget. Also called projectized.
Prompt List: A ready-made list of risk categories used to help a team think of risks, such as PESTLE, TECOP or VUCA.
Proposal Evaluation Techniques: The process of reviewing proposals provided by suppliers to support contract award decisions.
Prototypes: A method of obtaining early feedback on requirements by providing a working model of the expected product before actually building it.
Psychological Safety: A shared belief that team members can speak up, take risks and raise concerns without fear of negative consequences.
Pull Communication: Information placed where people can get it when they choose, such as an intranet, knowledge base or e-learning. It suits large audiences.
Push Communication: Information sent to specific people, such as emails, letters and reports. It confirms the message was sent, not that it was understood.

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Q

Qualitative Risk Analysis: Prioritizing risks by assessing their probability and impact, often with a probability and impact matrix. It is quick and subjective.
Quality: The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements.
Quality Audit: A structured, independent review of whether project work follows quality policies and procedures, to find good practices and gaps.
Quality Checklists: A structured tool used to verify that a set of required steps has been performed.
Quality Control Measurements: The documented results of quality control activities, compared with the quality requirements.
Quality Management Plan: A component of the program or project management plan that describes how an organization’s policies, procedures, and guidelines will be implemented to achieve the quality objectives. See also project management plan.
Quality Management System: The organizational framework whose structure provides the policies, processes, procedures, and resources required to implement the quality management plan. The typical project quality management plan should be compatible to the organization’s quality management system.
Quality Metrics: A description of a project or product attribute and how to measure it.
Quality Policy: A policy specific to the Project Quality Management Knowledge Area, it establishes the basic principles that should govern the organization’s actions as it implements its system for quality management.
Quality Report: A project document that includes quality management issues, recommendations for corrective actions, and a summary of findings from quality control activities and may include recommendations for process, project, and product improvements.
Quality Requirements: The conditions or criteria used to confirm that a deliverable or process is complete and acceptable, such as tests, certifications and validations.
Quality Test and Evaluation Documents: Documents such as checklists, test plans and inspection criteria used to check whether deliverables meet the quality objectives.
Quantitative Risk Analysis: Numerically analyzing the combined effect of risks on project objectives, using techniques such as Monte Carlo simulation, decision trees and expected monetary value.
Questionnaires: Written sets of questions designed to quickly accumulate information from a large number of respondents.
Questionnaires and Surveys: Written sets of questions used to gather information quickly from a large number of people.

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R

RACI Matrix: A responsibility assignment matrix that shows who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed for each task. Only one person should be accountable per task.
Readiness Assessment: An assessment that occurs as the organization approaches solution deployment. It helps the organization understand the extent to which the organization is prepared for the transition and evaluates the organization’s readiness to integrate and sustain the solution.
Recognition and Rewards: Ways of acknowledging and rewarding good work. They work best when they meet a need the person values and reward something within the person’s control.
Recognition Plan: A plan of which rewards and recognition team members will receive, and when.
Refactoring: Improving the design of a product, for example making code easier to maintain, without changing what it does.
Register: A written record of regular entries for evolving aspects of a project, such as risks, stakeholders, or defects
Regression Analysis: An analytical method where a series of input variables are examined in relation to their corresponding output results in order to develop a mathematical or statistical relationship.
Regulations: Requirements imposed by a governmental body. These requirements can establish product, process, or service characteristics, including applicable administrative provisions that have government-mandated compliance.
Relative Estimating: A method for creating estimates that are derived from performing a comparison against a similar body of work, taking effort, complexity, and uncertainty into consideration.
Release: One or more components of one or more products, which are intended to be put into production at the same time.
Release Backlog: The part of the product backlog planned for a specific release, which may span several iterations or sprints.
Release Plan: The plan that sets expectations for the dates, features, and/or outcomes expected to be delivered over the course of multiple iterations. See also project management plan.
Release Planning: The process of identifying a high-level plan for releasing or transitioning a product, deliverable, or increment of value.
Report: A formal record or summary of information
Request for Information (RFI): A bid document asking sellers for information about their capabilities before a formal request for bids.
Request for Proposal (RFP): A bid document asking sellers for detailed proposals on how they would do the work and what it would cost.
Request for Quotation (RFQ): A bid document asking sellers for a price quote, usually when the work is clearly defined.
Requirement: A condition or capability that is necessary to be present in a product, service, or result to satisfy a business need.
Requirements Documentation: A description of how individual requirements meet the business need for the project.
Requirements Management Plan: A component of the program or project management plan that describes how requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed. See also project management plan.
Requirements Traceability Matrix: A grid that links product requirements from their origin to the deliverables that satisfy them.
Reserve: A provision in the project management plan to mitigate cost and/or schedule risk, often used with a modifier (e.g., management reserve, contingency reserve) to provide further detail on what types of risk are meant to be mitigated.
Reserve Analysis: A method used to evaluate the amount of risk on the project and the amount of schedule and budget reserve to determine whether the reserve is sufficient for the remaining risk.
Residual Risk: The risk left over after a risk response has been carried out.
Resource: A team member or any physical item needed to complete the project.
Resource Breakdown Structure: A hierarchical representation of resources by category and type. See also organizational breakdown structure, risk breakdown structure, and work breakdown structure (WBS).
Resource Calendar: A calendar showing when each specific resource, such as a person or a piece of equipment, is available, including shifts, holidays and leave.
Resource Histogram: A bar chart showing how many units of a resource are needed in each time period. Peaks above the available level show over-allocation.
Resource Leveling: Moving start and finish dates to balance resource demand with the supply available. It can change the critical path and often makes the project longer.
Resource Management Plan: A component of the project management plan that describes how project resources are acquired, allocated, monitored, and controlled. See also project management plan.
Resource Manager: An individual with management authority over one or more resources.
Resource Optimization Technique: A technique in which activity start and finish dates are adjusted to balance demand for resources with the available supply. See also resource leveling and resource smoothing.
Resource Requirements: The types and quantities of resources needed for each activity or work package.
Resource Smoothing: Adjusting activities within their free and total float so resource needs stay within set limits. The critical path and end date don’t change.
Resource-Based View (RBV): A framework for identifying the internal resources and capabilities that give an organization a competitive advantage.
Resources Performance Domain: PMBOK 8 domain for planning, estimating, acquiring and controlling the team and physical resources, and leading the team.
Response Strategy: A high-level approach to address an individual risk or overall risk, broken down into a set of risk actions.
Responsibility: An assignment that can be delegated within a portfolio, program, or project management plan such that the assigned resource incurs a duty to perform the requirements of the assignment.
Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM): A grid that shows the project resources assigned to each work package.
Responsible, Accountable, Facilitator (RAF) Model: A responsibility model that shows who does the work, who is accountable for the outcome and who facilitates the process.
Result: An output from performing project management processes and activities. See also deliverable.
Retrospective: A regularly occurring workshop in which participants explore their work and results in order to improve both the process and product.
Return on Investment (ROI): The net gain from an investment divided by its cost, usually as a percentage. The higher the ROI, the better.
Revenue Forecasts: Predictions of the income a project’s outputs are expected to generate over time, used to judge financial value.
Rework: Action taken to bring a defective or nonconforming component into compliance with requirements or specifications.
Risk: An uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on one or more portfolio, program, or project objectives. See also issue, opportunity, and threat.
Risk Acceptance: A risk response strategy that involves acknowledging the risk and taking no action unless it occurs. Acceptance of the risk’s implication(s) usually means using schedule and/or cost reserves and accepting scope and/or quality reduction(s). See also risk avoidance, risk enhancement, risk exploiting, risk mitigation, risk sharing, and risk transference.
Risk Action: A detailed task that implements, in whole or in part, a response strategy in order to address an individual risk or overall risk.
Risk Action Owner: The person(s) responsible for carrying out the approved risk actions when responding to a given risk. Also known as a response owner.
Risk Analysis: The activities related to defining the characteristics of a risk and the degree to which it can impact objectives.
Risk Appetite: The degree of uncertainty an organization or individual is willing to accept in anticipation of a reward. See also risk threshold.
Risk Assessment: The process of identifying, analyzing, and determining the probability of occurrence of a risk and its impacts if it does occur.
Risk Attitude: A disposition toward uncertainty, adopted explicitly or implicitly by individuals and groups, driven by perception, and evidenced by observable behavior.
Risk Audit: A review of how effective the project’s risk management process is.
Risk Avoidance: A risk response strategy that involves eliminating the threat or protecting the portfolio, program, or project from its impact. See also risk acceptance, risk enhancement, risk exploiting, risk mitigation, risk sharing, and risk transference.
Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS): A hierarchical representation of potential sources of risk. See also organizational breakdown structure, resource breakdown structure, and work breakdown structure (WBS).
Risk Burndown Chart: A chart that shows total risk exposure falling over time or iterations.
Risk Categorization: Grouping risks by source (for example, using the RBS), by area of the work or by root cause, to find areas of high exposure.
Risk Category: A group of potential causes of risk.
Risk Data Quality Analysis: Checking how accurate, reliable and complete the information about each risk is.
Risk Data Quality Assessment: Technique to evaluate the degree to which the data about risks is useful for risk management.
Risk Enhancement: A risk response strategy that involves increasing the probability of occurrence or impact of an opportunity. See also risk acceptance, risk avoidance, risk exploiting, risk mitigation, risk sharing, and risk transference.
Risk Escalation: A risk response strategy that involves transferring the ownership of the risk to a relevant party in the organization because the risk is outside of scope or the team does not have sufficient authority to address it.
Risk Exploiting: A risk response strategy whereby the project team acts to ensure that an opportunity occurs. See also risk acceptance, risk avoidance, risk enhancement, risk mitigation, risk sharing, and risk transference.
Risk Exposure: An aggregate measure of the potential impact of all risks at any given point in time in a portfolio, program, or project.
Risk Factors: The aspects used to assess a risk: how likely it is, the range of possible impacts, when it might happen and how often.
Risk Identification: The process of locating and profiling the characteristics of risks related to work objectives.
Risk Management: Activities used to identify, analyze, respond to, and monitor risks at the enterprise, portfolio, program, or project level.
Risk Management Framework: A structure that organizes the process and activities of managing risks in an iterative fashion.
Risk Management Life Cycle: A structured approach for undertaking a comprehensive view of risk throughout the enterprise, portfolio, program, and project domains.
Risk Management Plan: A component of the portfolio, program, or project management plan that describes how risk management activities will be structured and performed. See also project management plan.
Risk Mitigation: A risk response strategy that involves decreasing the probability of occurrence or impact of a threat. See also risk acceptance, risk avoidance, risk enhancement, risk exploiting, risk sharing, and risk transference.
Risk Owner: The person responsible for watching a risk and carrying out the response if it occurs.
Risk Performance Domain: PMBOK 8 domain for planning risk management, identifying and analyzing risks, planning and implementing responses, and monitoring risks.
Risk Register: A repository in which outputs of risk management processes are recorded.
Risk Report: A project document developed progressively throughout the Project Risk Management processes, which summarizes information on individual project risks and the level of overall project risk.
Risk Response: An action, planned or implemented, to address particular threats and opportunities.
Risk Review: A meeting to examine and document the effectiveness of risk responses in dealing with overall project risk and with identified individual project risks.
Risk Sharing: A risk response strategy that involves allocating ownership of an opportunity to a third party that is best able to capture the opportunity or absorb the impact of the threat. See also risk acceptance, risk avoidance, risk enhancement, risk exploiting, risk mitigation, and risk transference.
Risk Threshold: The measure of acceptable variation around an objective that reflects the risk appetite of the organization and stakeholders. See also risk appetite.
Risk Tolerance: [deprecated] The degree of uncertainty that an organization or individual is willing to withstand. See also risk appetite and risk threshold.
Risk Transference: A risk response strategy that involves shifting the impact of a threat to a third party, together with ownership of the response. See also risk acceptance, risk avoidance, risk enhancement, risk exploiting, risk mitigation, and risk sharing.
Risk Trigger: A warning sign that a risk is about to happen or has happened.
Risk-Adjusted Backlog: A backlog that includes product work and actions to address threats and opportunities
Roadmap: A high-level timeline that depicts such things as milestones, significant events, reviews, and decision points.
Role: A defined function to be performed by a project team member, such as testing, filing, inspecting, or coding.
Rolling Wave Planning: An iterative planning technique in which the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail, while the work in the future is planned at a higher level. See also progressive elaboration.
Roman Voting: A quick vote with thumbs: up means agree, down means disagree and sideways means neutral.
Root Cause Analysis: An analytical method used to determine the basic underlying reason that causes a variance, defect, or risk.
Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) Estimate: An initial estimate of the cost of a project or parts of a project, with a rough accuracy range. This estimate provides stakeholders and decision makers with a general idea of the project cost’s order of magnitude. The ROM estimate is refined over time as more information becomes available during the project, following the concept of progressive elaboration.

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S

Salience Model: A way of classifying stakeholders by three attributes: power, urgency and legitimacy.
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): A knowledge base of integrated patterns for applying lean-agile practices at enterprise scale.
Scatter Diagram: A graph that shows the relationship between two variables
Schedule: See project schedule and schedule model.
Schedule Baseline: The approved version of a schedule model that can be changed using formal change control procedures and is used as the basis for comparison to actual results. See also baseline, cost baseline, performance measurement baseline, and scope baseline.
Schedule Compression: A technique used to shorten the schedule duration without reducing the project scope. See also crashing and fast tracking.
Schedule Data: The information used to describe and control the schedule, such as milestones, activities, activity attributes, assumptions and constraints.
Schedule Forecasts: Estimates or predictions of conditions and events in the project’s future based on information and knowledge available at the time the schedule is calculated.
Schedule Management Plan: A component of the program or project management plan that establishes the criteria and the activities for developing, monitoring, and controlling the schedule. See also project management plan.
Schedule Model: A representation of the plan for executing the project’s activities, including durations, dependencies, and other planning information, used to produce a project schedule along with other scheduling artifacts. See also schedule model analysis.
Schedule Model Analysis: A process used to investigate or analyze the output of the schedule model in order to optimize the schedule. See also schedule model.
Schedule Network Analysis: The techniques used to build and analyze the schedule model, such as the critical path method, resource optimization and what-if analysis.
Schedule Performance Domain: PMBOK 8 domain for planning, developing, monitoring and controlling the project schedule.
Schedule Performance Index (SPI): A measure of schedule efficiency expressed as the ratio of earned value to planned value. See also cost performance index (CPI).
Schedule Variance (SV): A measure of schedule performance expressed as the difference between the earned value and the planned value. See also cost variance (CV).
Scheduling Tool: A tool that provides schedule component names, definitions, structural relationships, and formats that support the application of a scheduling method.
Scope: The sum of the products, services, and results to be provided as a project. See also project scope and product scope.
Scope Baseline: The approved version of formal scope documents that can be changed using formal change control procedures and is used as the basis for comparison to actual results. See also baseline, cost baseline, performance measurement baseline, and schedule baseline.
Scope Creep: The uncontrolled expansion to product or project scope without adjustments to time, cost, and resources.
Scope Management Plan: A component of the program or project management plan that describes how the scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled, and validated. See also project management plan.
Scope Performance Domain: PMBOK 8 domain for deciding and controlling what the project will deliver: planning scope, eliciting requirements, defining scope, building the scope structure (WBS), and controlling and validating scope.
Scrum: An agile framework for developing complex products in timeboxed sprints, with set roles, events and artifacts.
Scrum Master: The servant leader of a Scrum team who coaches the team, facilitates Scrum events, removes impediments and protects the team from disruptions.
Scrum of Scrums: A way of scaling Scrum in which representatives of several teams meet regularly to coordinate their dependencies and integration.
Scrum Team: The product owner, scrum master and developers working together in Scrum.
Scrum@Scale: A framework that extends Scrum to many teams through a scaled structure of roles, artifacts and events.
S-Curve: A graph that displays cumulative costs over a specified period of time
S-curve Analysis: A technique used to indicate performance trends by using a graph that displays cumulative costs over a specific time period.
Secondary Risk: A new risk created by carrying out a risk response.
Self-Organizing Teams: A team formation where the team functions with an absence of centralized control.
Seller: A provider or supplier of products, services, or results to an organization.
Seller Proposals: Formal responses from sellers to a request for proposal or other procurement document specifying the price, commercial terms of sale, and technical specifications or capabilities the seller will do for the requesting organization that, if accepted, would bind the seller to perform the resulting agreement.
Sensitivity Analysis: An analysis technique to determine which individual project risks or other sources of uncertainty have the most potential impact on project outcomes, by correlating variations in project outcomes with variations in elements of a quantitative risk analysis model.
Sequence Activities: The process of identifying and documenting relationships among the project activities.
Servant Leadership: The practice of leading the team by focusing on understanding and addressing the needs and development of team members in order to enable the highest possible team performance.
Service Level Agreement (SLA): A contract between a service provider (either internal or external) and the end user that defines the level of service expected from the service provider.
Set-Based Design: Exploring several design options in parallel and narrowing them down as more is learned, rather than choosing one early.
Sharing Ratio: How cost overruns and savings are split between buyer and seller in an incentive contract, for example 80/20.
Shu-Ha-Ri: Three stages of mastery: Shu (follow the rules), Ha (adapt and break the rules) and Ri (go beyond the rules and create your own way).
Simulation: An analytical technique that models the combined effect of uncertainties to evaluate their potential impact on objectives.
Single Source: Buying from a preferred seller without competition, even though other sellers exist.
Single-Point Estimating: An estimating method that involves using data to calculate a single value that reflects a best guess estimate.
Situational Leadership II: A model in which the leader adapts their style to each person’s competence and commitment: directing, coaching, supporting or delegating.
Skill Matrix: A table that maps the skills a project needs against the skills the team has, to find gaps that need training or hiring.
Smoke Testing: Running a small set of quick tests to make sure the most important functions work before deeper testing.
Smooth/Accommodate: A conflict technique: stressing areas of agreement and playing down differences to keep harmony. It is only a temporary fix.
Sole Source: Buying from the only seller available, for example because it holds a patent.
Solution Requirements: The features, functions and characteristics of the product that meet business and stakeholder needs. They are split into functional and nonfunctional requirements.
Source Selection Criteria: A set of attributes desired by the buyer which a seller is required to meet or exceed to be selected for a contract.
Sourcing Strategy Plan: PMBOK 8’s part of the project management plan that states which parts of the project will be insourced, outsourced or both, and the reasons.
Special Interest Group (SIG): A community of people who share a focus on a specific topic and work together to deepen and share their knowledge.
Special Provisions: Additions or changes to a standard contract’s terms for a specific procurement. Also called special conditions.
Specification: A precise statement of the needs to be satisfied and the essential characteristics that are required.
Specification Limits: The area, on either side of the centerline, or mean, of data plotted on a control chart that meets the customer’s requirements for a product or service. This area may be greater than or less than the area defined by the control limits. See also control limits.
Spike: A timeboxed piece of work to research a question or reduce uncertainty before committing to a solution.
Sponsor: An individual or a group that provides resources and support for the portfolio, program, or project, and is accountable for enabling success. See also stakeholder.
Sponsoring Organization: The entity responsible for providing the project’s sponsor and a conduit for project funding or other project resources.
Sprint: A timeboxed interval within a project during which a usable and potentially releasable increment of a product is created. See also iteration.
Sprint Backlog: The items selected from the product backlog for the current sprint or iteration, plus the plan to deliver them. Also called the iteration backlog.
Sprint Planning: The event at the start of a sprint in which the Scrum team agrees what to deliver in the sprint and how.
Sprint Retrospective: The event at the end of a sprint in which the Scrum team reviews how it worked and agrees improvements for the next sprint.
Sprint Review: The event at the end of a sprint in which the team shows the completed work to stakeholders and gets their feedback.
Stacey Matrix: A model that places work by how certain the requirements are and how much stakeholders agree, to show where agile approaches fit best.
Stakeholder: An individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a portfolio, program, or project. See also sponsor.
Stakeholder Analysis: A technique of systematically gathering and analyzing quantitative and qualitative information to determine whose interests should be taken into account throughout the project.
Stakeholder Cube: A three-dimensional version of the stakeholder grid models that combines several dimensions, such as power, interest and attitude, to help identify and engage stakeholders.
Stakeholder Engagement: Activities conducted to identify and analyze stakeholder needs and manage expectations and communications to foster stakeholder support.
Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix: A matrix that compares current and desired stakeholder engagement levels.
Stakeholder Engagement Levels: The five levels used in the stakeholder engagement assessment matrix: Unaware, Resistant, Neutral, Supportive and Leading. Each stakeholder’s current (C) and desired (D) levels are recorded.
Stakeholder Engagement Plan: A component of the program or project management plan that identifies the strategies and actions required to promote productive involvement of stakeholders in program or project decision-making and execution. See also project management plan.
Stakeholder Register: A project document that includes information about project stakeholders including an assessment and classification of project stakeholders.
Stakeholder Requirements: The needs of a stakeholder or a group of stakeholders.
Stakeholders Performance Domain: PMBOK 8 domain for identifying stakeholders, planning and managing their engagement and communications, and monitoring both.
Standard: A document established by an authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example.
Standard Contract: A pre-approved contract template, usually from the legal department.
Start Date: A point in time associated with a schedule activity’s start, usually qualified by one of the following: actual, planned, estimated, scheduled, early, late, target, baseline, or current.
Start-to-Finish (SF): A dependency in which an activity cannot finish until another activity has started. It is rarely used.
Start-to-Start (SS): A dependency in which an activity cannot start until another activity has started.
Statement of Work (SOW): A narrative description of products, services, or results to be delivered by the project.
Statistical Sampling: Checking a selected part of a population instead of every item, for example 10 out of 100.
Status Meeting: A regularly scheduled meeting to exchange and analyze information about the current progress of the project and its performance
Status Report: A report on the current status of the project
Steering Committee: An advisory body of senior stakeholders who provide direction and support for the portfolio, program, or project team and make decisions outside of the team’s authority.
Stewardship: Taking responsible care of the resources, people and environment entrusted to the project, with integrity and respect.
Storming: Tuckman stage 2: the team starts working together and disagreements appear about the work, approach and roles.
Story Map: A visual model of all the features and functionality desired for a given product, created to give the team a holistic view of what they are building and why.
Story Point: A unit used to estimate the relative level of effort needed to implement a user story.
Storytelling: Using stories to explain a vision, share lessons or make information memorable and persuasive.
Strategic Plan: A high-level document that explains an organization’s vision and mission plus the approach that will be adopted to achieve this mission and vision, including the specific goals and objectives to be achieved during the period covered by the document
Strategy Artifacts: Documents created prior to or at the start of the project that address strategic, business, or high-level information about the project
Successor Activity: A dependent activity that logically comes after another activity in a schedule. See also predecessor activity and summary activity.
Summary Activity: A group of related schedule activities aggregated and displayed as a single activity. See also predecessor activity and successor activity.
Sunk Costs: Money already spent. It should not affect the decision whether to continue a project.
Supportive PMO: A PMO that gives advice, templates, training and lessons learned. It has low control over projects.
Sustainability: Delivering outcomes at a pace and in a way that can be kept up over time, respecting people, materials and the environment.
Swarm: A method in which multiple team members focus collectively on resolving a specific problem or task
SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) Analysis: Analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of an organization, project, or option.
Systems Thinking: Seeing the project as a system of interacting parts within its wider environment, rather than as separate pieces.

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T

Tacit Knowledge: Personal knowledge that can be difficult to articulate and share such as beliefs, experience, and insights
Tailoring: The deliberate adaptation of approach, governance, and processes to make them more suitable for the given environment and the work at hand.
Target-Cost Contract: A contract with an agreed target cost, in which any overrun or saving is shared between buyer and seller by an agreed formula.
Task: A specific activity or work that needs to be completed in order to achieve a project goal.
Task Board: A visual representation of the progress of the planned work that allows everyone to see the status of the tasks
Team Charter: A document that records the team values, agreements, and operating guidelines, as well as establishes clear expectations regarding acceptable behavior by project team members
Team Performance Assessments: Evaluations of how effectively the team is working, used to find training, coaching or other support the team needs.
Team Performance Domain: The performance domain that addresses activities and functions associated with the people who are responsible for producing project deliverables that realize business outcomes
Technical Debt: The future cost of shortcuts taken or work not done earlier in the product life cycle.
Technical Performance Analysis: Comparing the technical results achieved during the project with the planned schedule of technical achievements, to spot risks.
Technical Performance Measures: Quantifiable measures of technical performance that are used to ensure system components meet the technical requirements
Template: A partially complete document in a predefined format that provides a defined structure for collecting, organizing, and presenting information and data
Terms and Conditions: All the clauses in a contract, both the standard (general) terms and the special provisions.
Test and Inspection Planning: Deciding how deliverables will be tested or inspected to confirm they meet stakeholder needs and performance and reliability targets.
Test Plan: A document describing deliverables that will be tested, tests that will be conducted, and the processes that will be used in testing. See also project management plan.
Test-Driven Development (TDD): Writing the tests before the code, so work is validated continuously and defects are caught immediately.
Testing/Product Evaluations: Organized checks of a product to find errors, defects or nonconformance and confirm it meets requirements.
Theory X: McGregor’s view that managers believe people dislike work and need close supervision.
Theory Y: McGregor’s view that managers believe people are self-motivated and want to do good work without close supervision.
Theory Z: Ouchi’s view that people are motivated by long-term commitment, job security, shared decision-making and concern for their well-being.
Threat: A risk that would have a negative effect on one or more portfolio, program, or project objectives. See also issue, opportunity, and risk.
Three-Point Estimating: Estimating with three values, optimistic (O), most likely (M) and pessimistic (P), to account for uncertainty.
Threshold: A predetermined value of a measurable project variable that represents a limit that requires action to be taken if it is reached
Throughput: The number of items passing through a process.
Throughput Chart: A diagram that shows the accepted deliverables over time
Time and Materials (T&M) Contract: A type of contract that is a hybrid contractual arrangement containing aspects of both cost-reimbursable and fixed-price contracts.
Timebox: A short, fixed period of time in which work is to be completed.
To-Complete Performance Index (TCPI): The cost efficiency needed on the remaining work to meet a target: (BAC – EV) / (BAC – AC) to finish on budget, or (BAC – EV) / (EAC – AC) to meet the EAC. Above 1 means harder to achieve.
Tolerance: The quantified description of acceptable variation for a quality requirement
Top-Down Estimating: Estimating the whole project or a large part of it at once, usually from past projects or expert judgment, then dividing that figure among the lower-level parts.
Tornado Diagram: A sensitivity analysis chart that shows which risks or variables have the biggest effect on the outcome, with the largest bar at the top.
Total Cost of Ownership: A financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners to determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or service.
Total Float: How long an activity can be delayed without delaying the project end date or a required milestone. Critical path activities usually have zero total float.
Traceability: The ability to track information across the product life cycle by establishing linkages among objects.
Transition and Readiness Requirements: Temporary capabilities needed to move from the current state to the future state, such as data conversion and training.
Transition States: How organizational change happens: moving from the current state, through a transition state, to the desired future state.
Trend Analysis: An analytical method that uses mathematical models to forecast future outcomes based on historical results.
Triangular Distribution: A three-point estimate using a simple average: (O + M + P) / 3.
Trigger Condition: An event or situation that indicates that a risk is about to occur.
Triple Bottom Line: A framework for considering the full cost of doing business by evaluating a company’s bottom line from the perspective of profit, people, and the planet
T-Shaped: A person with one deep specialization and broad ability in the other skills the team needs.
T-Shirt Sizing: Relative estimating using sizes such as XS, S, M, L and XL instead of numbers.
Tuckman Ladder: A model of five stages of team development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning. Teams can get stuck in a stage or go back to an earlier one.

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U

Unanimity: A decision that everyone in the group agrees with.
Uncertainty: A lack of understanding and awareness of issues, events, path to follow, or solutions to pursue
Uncertainty Domain: The performance domain that addresses activities and functions associated with risk and uncertainty
Use Case: An artifact for describing and exploring how a user interacts with a system to achieve a specific goal.
User Experience (UX): How a person feels and performs when using a product. UX work improves usability and accessibility in the interaction between the user and the product.
User Story: A brief description of an outcome for a specific user, which is a promise for a conversation to clarify details.

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V

Validation: The assurance that a product, service, or result meets the needs of the customer and other identified stakeholders. See also verification.
Value: The ratio of benefit to investment that is gained from achieving the goals of a portfolio, program, or project.
Value Breakdown Structure (VBS): PMBOK 8 hierarchy that links the project’s deliverables to the value each one is expected to create.
Value Chain: The series of activities an organization performs to create and deliver value to its customers.
Value Delivery Office: A project delivery support structure that focuses on coaching teams, building agile skills and capabilities throughout the organization, and mentoring sponsors and product owners to be more effective in those roles.
Value Delivery System: A collection of strategic business activities aimed at building, sustaining, and/or advancing an organization.
Value Proposition: The value of a product or service that an organization communicates to its customers.
Value Stream: The flow of activities that delivers a specific product or service to the customer.
Value Stream Map: A display of the critical steps in a process and the time taken in each step used to identify waste.
Value Stream Mapping: A lean enterprise method used to document, analyze, and improve the flow of information or materials required to produce a product or service for a customer
Vanity Metric: A measure that appears to show some result but does not provide useful information for making decisions
Variable Costs: Costs that change with the amount of work or production, such as materials and hourly wages.
Variance: A quantifiable deviation, departure, or divergence away from a known baseline or expected value.
Variance Analysis: A technique for determining the cause and degree of difference between the baseline and actual performance. See also cost variance (CV), schedule variance (SV), and variance at completion (VAC).
Variance at Completion (VAC): A projection of the amount of budget deficit or surplus, expressed as the difference between the budget at completion and the estimate at completion. See also budget at completion (BAC), cost variance (CV), estimate at completion (EAC), and variance analysis.
Velocity: A measure of a team’s productivity rate at which the deliverables are produced, validated, and accepted within a predefined interval.
Velocity Chart: A chart that tracks the rate at which the deliverables are produced, validated, and accepted within a predefined interval
Verification: The evaluation of whether or not a product, service, or result complies with a regulation, requirement, specification, or imposed condition. See also validation.
Verified Deliverables: Completed deliverables that quality control has checked for correctness. They then go to the customer or sponsor for formal acceptance.
Virtual Reality (VR): Technology that creates a fully simulated environment, for example for training or walking through a design before it is built.
Virtual Team: A group of people with a shared goal who work in different locations and who engage with each other primarily through phone and other electronic communications
Vision Statement: A summarized, high-level description about the expectations for a product such as target market, users, major benefits, and what differentiates the product from others in the market
Visual Controls: Displays that make the status of work visible at a glance, such as task boards, kanban boards and burn charts.
Visual Data and Information: Artifacts that organize and present data and information in a visual format, such as charts, graphs, matrices, and diagrams
Voice of the Customer: A planning method used to provide products, services, and results that truly reflect customer requirements by translating those customer requirements into the appropriate technical requirements for each phase of project or product development
Volatility: The possibility for rapid and unpredictable change
VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. A prompt list for the conditions that make a project unpredictable.

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W

Waste: Activities that consume resources and/or time without adding value.
Watch List: Low-priority risks kept in the risk register to be monitored rather than actively managed.
WBS dictionary: A document that provides detailed deliverable, activity, scheduling, cost, and resource information about each component in the work breakdown structure. See also work breakdown structure (WBS).
Weighted Milestone Method: A method of estimating earned value in which the budget value of a work package is divided into measurable segments, each ending with a milestone that is assigned a weighted budget value. See also fixed formula method.
Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF): A prioritization method that divides the cost of delay by the job size, so items with the most value for the least effort go first.
Weighting System: A way of scoring seller proposals by giving each selection criterion a weight and rating each seller against it.
What-If Scenario Analysis: The process of evaluating scenarios in order to predict their effect on project objectives.
Wideband Delphi: An estimating method in which subject matter experts go through multiple rounds of producing estimates individually, with a team discussion after each round, until a consensus is achieved
WIP Limits: The maximum number of work items allowed in a workflow stage at one time. Limiting WIP exposes bottlenecks and speeds up flow.
Wireframes: Simple, low-detail layouts of screens or pages that show structure and navigation, used to get early feedback.
Withdraw/Avoid: A conflict technique: retreating from or postponing the conflict. The problem is not solved.
Work Authorization System: A system that ensures work is done at the right time, in the right order and by the right people, by formally authorizing the start of each piece of work.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): A hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be carried out by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables. See also organizational breakdown structure, resource breakdown structure, risk breakdown structure, and WBS dictionary.
Work in Progress (WIP): Work that has been started but not yet finished. Also called work in process.
Work Package: The work defined at the lowest level of the work breakdown structure for which cost, effort, duration, and resources are estimated and managed.
Work Performance Data: Raw observations and measurements collected while the work is done, such as percent complete, actual costs and actual durations.
Work Performance Information: Work performance data compared with the plan and analyzed in context, for example as variances, so it can support decisions.
Work Performance Reports: Work performance information presented in a usable form, such as status reports, dashboards or memos, to support decisions and raise issues.
Workaround: An unplanned response to a risk that has occurred, usually because it wasn’t identified or was accepted without a plan.
Working Agreements: Explicit guidelines a team creates for how members will collaborate, communicate and make decisions.
Working Capital: Current assets minus current liabilities: the money available to invest, including in projects.