P374 - Project Management (ch.4)

Activity

Piece of work that takes time

Critical Path

Longest path through the network; sets the project length.

Crashing

Paying extra to shorten activities

Crash cost/ Crash time

The cost and the time when an activity is rushed as much as possible.

Early Start (ES)/ Early Finish (EF)

The soonest and activity can start/finish.

Gantt Chart

Bar chart of activities over time.

Immediate Predecessor

An activity that must finish right before another starts.

Indirect Costs

Overhead that grows with every extra day.

Late Start (LS)/ Late Finish (LF)

The latest an activity can start/finish without delaying the project.

Leveling

Software rescheduling to fix over-allocated resources.

Matrix Project

People borrowed from several departments; 2 bosses.

Milestone

A specific checkpoint event

Pure Project

A dedicated, full-time, self-contained team.

Functional Project

A project housed inside one department.

Slack

Wiggle room: LS-ES where 0 means it is critical.

Statement of Work (SOW)

Written description of project’s goals, schedule, and budget.

Sub-optimization

Each PM hoarding resources, hurting other projects.

Task

Subdivision of a project, usually under several months.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

The tree of tasks, subtasks, and work packages.