| Team-Fly |  |
 | Integrated Project Management
By Earl Hall, Juliane Johnson
| | Table of Contents | | |
- Action item:
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An activity a team member performs following a team meeting to gather information for the next meeting.
- Basic project:
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A project whose technological and process diversity is such that only one project manager and no more than 30 team members can handle it.
- Beta (b) test:
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Second level testing of a newly developed product, process, or service, to demonstrate that the product meets the specified performance.
- Collaborative decision-making:
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The process by which a group of workers shares their diverse knowledge and skills to solve a problem and arrive at a decision that all can accept.
- Cost/benefit ratio:
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The ratio between the cost of producing a product, process design, or service procedure and its expected benefit (targeted to be less than one). A benefit is generally determined over a specified time period; it is represented in monetary terms.
- Critical path chart:
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An arrow diagram chart displaying project tasks and task dependencies, plotted against a time scale. The time scale displays a task sequence that has no slack available to buffer the other tasks.
- Direct cost:
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The cost of the labor, materials, and equipment required to execute a task.
- Downstream task:
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A task that can be initiated only following the output of a prior task.
- Facilitator:
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An individual who provides leadership to a workgroup, helping group members share their knowledge and experience to collaboratively arrive at decisions. The project manager plays this role at the team meetings.
- Feasibility:
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The process of discovering if sufficient knowledge, skill, and resources exist within an organization to execute a specified project.
- Flowchart:
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A diagram that displays a sequence of events that can lead to a specified outcome.
- Function manager:
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The manager of a group of workers who perform a certain function, such as artwork and layout, engineering, programming, training, and so on, needed for a project task.
- Gantt chart:
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A graphical representation of a project's schedule laid out on graph paper that lists project tasks in the left-hand column in descending order and displays task sequence and duration against a horizontal axis of days or weeks. Working Gantt chart: A Gantt chart used to describe a project that is in the process of being planned. Basic Gantt chart: A completed working Gantt chart that shows all of the planned tasks and risk factors. Operations Gantt chart: A chart that shows the actual flow of a project effort during the project's execution. It is based on the basic project Gantt chart. Summary Gantt chart: A project Gantt chart that only displays the major work packages as summaries of the basic Gantt chart task details. Detailed Gantt chart: Either a basic or operations Gantt chart that displays a project effort in terms of each individual task.
- Internal customer philosophy:
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Task leaders communicating with one another to determine pertinent task information that will best help downstream task leaders work "smarter."
- Kickoff meeting:
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The meeting where the project manager and the team members meet for the first time as a group so that the team can learn the steps involved in planning the project and can initiate the first step.
- Leadership:
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The ability to organize and facilitate the efforts of a workgroup to identify and share an objective and to cooperatively and collaboratively work with diligence to achieve this objective.
- Macro project:
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A project whose size and technologies dictate that a complex structure of major and basic projects are needed create the desired product. Its base is necessarily a complex of basic projects. Basic and major project managers, who are led and coordinated by a management team, run a mecro project.
- Major project:
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A large project that is organized as a group of basic projects, which are executed in parallel or following one another sequentially. One person, a major project manager, coordinates the work of all the basic project managers.
- Major work package:
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A term used to describe one large project area of effort of a certain work category that holds within itself several smaller areas of effort, each which further break down into tasks.
- Milestone meeting:
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This meeting is held to review completed project tasks. It is scheduled at a natural break point along the task flow after a portion of the project has been completed, or when 20 to 40 project tasks have been completed. It is held to inform downstream task leaders of the finished work and to discuss their plans to begin work. All project stakeholders are invited to attend this meeting. It is an important communications activity.
- PMBOK®:
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A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge is a guide published by the Project Management Institute (PMI) as a resource to help project managers with their work.
- Predecessor tasks:
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Tasks that must be completed before a successor task can begin.
- Process improvement project:
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A project that is 1) designed to either reduce the cost of performing a process or the time taken to perform a process; 2) designed to improve the quality of the output of a process.
- Product development or improvement project:
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A project for the design and development or redevelopment of a product that makes a significant, new contribution to fulfilling the customer's needs or solving a known problem.
- Project closure:
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Those efforts undertaken to demonstrate that the project has met its objectives. Project closure includes holding the team review, delivering the project report, stopping charges billed against the project, and holding the team celebration.
- Project execution:
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Doing the task work necessary to reach the project's objective(s).
- Project launch:
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The efforts that constitute the first steps in executing the project plan, which are taken the day after the sponsor and customer have signed off on the plan.
- Project Management Institute (PMI):
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An international organization of nearly 100,000 members with more than 200 local chapters. Membership is open to anyone having an interest in project management. PMI is the code name that the Project Management Institute uses to identify itself and its publications.
- Project Management Professional (PMP®):
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The title, Project Management Professional, which is awarded by the Project Management Institute (PMI) to any member who has passed a series of tests based on PMBOK® and who has practiced project management for several years. (College training in project management can partially count for years of practice.)
- Project product:
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A physical device, process, or service plan that meets the requirements of a project sponsor and customer.
- Project progress documentation:
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A means of displaying a project's progress as measured by the completion of project tasks.
- Project team member:
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A project team member is 1) a person responsible for performing one or several tasks on the project task list, or 2) a person leading a workgroup that is responsible for performing a task(s) on the project's task list.
- Resource manager:
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The supervisor of a group of technical people from which project task leaders and workgroups members are recruited by the project manager.
- Risk analysis:
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Procedures followed, task by task, to analyze a project's uncertainties. It is used to determine the amount of time to be allowed for these unforeseen problems in the form of a risk factor and to determine contengency plans.
- Risk factor:
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A time duration bar shown along the critical path of the Gantt chart indicating a time buffer for the random task time overruns that can occur during execution of the preceding string of tasks.
- Risk factor resources:
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The calculated probable costs associated with the task overruns that contribute to the risk factor.
- Scope statement:
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A written statement describing a general problem area or an opportunity. It serves as a guide to initiate a project that will either reduce the problem or take advantage of the opportunity.
- Slack:
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The time span between the end of a predecessor task and the start of a successor task when the start has been delayed because another predecessor takes longer than the task with slack.
- Specification:
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A written statement that details the exact outcome of a project in measurable terms.
- Sponsor:
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The person who first discovers the need for a project and initiates the project. A sponsor must be someone holding a position in the organization that enables him or her to tap into necessary project resources and to choose and direct a project manager. The sponsor acts as the project's customer (if the project is in-house) or as the representative for an outside customer.
- Statement of work:
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A written description of the effort that has been agreed upon by the sponsor and project manager. It is used to migrate the project from a general scope statement to a precise project specification.
- Successor task:
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A task that utilizes the output of a predecessor task and directly follows its predecessor(s).
- Supportive work environment:
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It consists of sponsors, resource managers, and task leaders in the project workplace who accept the IPM method of executing projects and give it their full cooperation.
- Task:
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A unit of effort to achieve a specific outcome that can be performed by one individual or workgroup without breaking it down into separable sections. Tasks are the building blocks of a project.
- Task bar:
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The bar on a Gantt chart that represents the time duration of a task.
- Task leader:
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A project team member-specialist who executes a task or leads a project's task workgroup.
- Task stream:
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The successive flow of related tasks recorded between two Gantt chart date points.
- Team norms:
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The rules of procedure that a team follows during team meetings to ensure orderly processes and effective communication and cooperation.
- Technical skill:
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The ability to perform work requiring some special knowledge.
- Time buffer:
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The sum total of all of a project's risk factors. A reliable project completion date can be forecast once the time buffer is known.
- Upstream task:
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A task having a predecessor relationship sometimes several tasks removed to a reference task.
- Walk-about management:
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The practice of the project manager making visits to workers who are actively involved in project efforts to offer encouragement and discuss their progress.
- Work breakdown structure:
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A model that a project manager uses at the beginning of a project to capture each and every major effort to be performed for the project; the manager then decomposes the efforts into separate work packages.
- Work package:
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Work that can be broken down into separable units, or tasks, that must be performed to execute a project.
- Workgroup:
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Workers who are capable of working together to complete a task without the need of precise instructions.
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