Project Management Flashcards

Flashcards related to project management definitions.

Project

A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.

Major Characteristics of a Project

Has an established objective, defined lifespan with a beginning and end, involves several departments and professionals, involves doing something never done before, and has specific time, cost, and performance requirements.

Program

A group of related projects designed to accomplish a common goal over an extended period of time

Program Management

A process of managing a group of ongoing, interdependent, related projects in a coordinated way to achieve strategic objectives

Technical Dimension of Project Management

The formal, disciplined, purely logical parts of the process, including planning, scheduling, and controlling projects.

Sociocultural Dimension of Project Management

Involves the contradictory and paradoxical world of implementation, centering on creating a temporary social system within a larger organizational environment that combines the talents of a divergent set of professionals working to complete the project.

Strategic Management

The process of assessing “what we are” and deciding and implementing “what we intend to be and how we are going to get there.”

Organizational Mission

Identifies “what we want to become” and the scope of the organization in terms of its product and service.

Objectives

Specific, concrete, measurable terms translating the organization's strategy into action, detailing where a firm is headed and when it will get there.

SMART Objectives

Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time related

Optimism Bias

Our tendency to overestimate our likelihood of experiencing positive events and underestimate our likelihood of experiencing negative events

Optimism Bias

Overly positive about the outcomes of planned activities

Uniqueness Bias

Individuals see themselves as more singular than they actually are

Implementation Gap

The lack of understanding and consensus of organization strategy among top and middle-level managers.

Sacred Cow

a project that a powerful, high-ranking official is advocating.

Multitasking

Starting and stopping work on one task to go and work on another project, then returning to the work on the original task.

Phase Gate Model

A series of gates that a project must pass through in order to be completed.

Payback Model

Measures the time the project will take to recover the project investment

Net Present Value (NPV)

Uses management’s minimum desired rate of return (discount rate) to compute the present value of all net cash inflows.

Checklist Models

Use a list of questions to review potential projects and to determine their acceptance or rejection.

Multi-Weighted Scoring Models

Use several weighted selection criteria to evaluate project proposals Include qualitative and/or quantitative criteria Allow for comparison with other potential projects.

Bread-and-butter projects

Involve evolutionary improvements to current products and services.

Pearls

Represent revolutionary commercial advances using proven technology

Oysters

Involve technological breakthroughs with tremendous commercial potential.

White elephants

Showed promise at one time but are no longer viable.