Chapter 13

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts from the notes.

PMI

Project Management Institute; international association of project managers based in America with a South African chapter; aims to professionalise project management worldwide; published A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (2004).

Project

A unique and complex process with interrelated tasks intended to produce a specific deliverable within a defined schedule and budget; constrained by objective, schedule, and cost.

Project brief

Statement of the customer’s problem and constraints; does not specify the solution; may define an opportunity to exploit; states customer requirements in terms of business processes.

Customer

Person or group who sanctions the project brief, pays, and decides whether the project meets requirements; customer satisfaction defines the project’s success. Requirements are stated to the problem, not the solution.

Stakeholders

Individuals or organizations with real or imagined interests in the project or its outcome; may be internal or external; include customers, financiers, owners, and the public; their objectives must be identified and balanced in the plan.

Public participation

Stakeholder engagement process: informing the public, obtaining consent, allowing them to influence decisions, and inviting project-initiated actions; open-ended and potentially delaying, but can improve project quality.

Decision-making milestones

Milestones that demarcate phases and require authentication and authorization decisions by the customer to proceed; align with concept, definition, and implementation phases; correspond to baselines.

Authenticate

Customer’s acceptance of the recommendations from the preceding phase; endorsement of the problem or need before moving to the next phase.

Authorise

Customer’s permission to start the next phase and to spend funds; formal go-ahead to proceed.

Baseline

A formal plan for a phase placed under change control; used as the point of departure for performance measurement and change management; each milestone has an associated baseline.

Project life cycle

The four generic PMI phases: concept, definition (design), execution/implementation, and close-out (handover); guides and confines project strategy and management; risks and uncertainties are managed throughout. Requires tailoring for each project.

Concept phase

Phase in which customer requirements are clarified, stakeholders identified, objectives set, KPIs defined, alternatives evaluated, risks assessed, and a provisional plan/baseline prepared for the definition phase.

Definition phase

Phase where the work breakdown structure for the implementation phase is developed; contractors identified; cost and schedule estimates prepared; detailed implementation plan and provisional baseline created.

Implementation phase

Phase where tasks are contracted and executed; project performance is monitored and controlled; corrective actions are initiated as needed.

Close-out phase

Phase involving acceptance testing of deliverables, transfer of lifecycle management to the owner, closing accounts, reassigning the project team, and conducting a project post-mortem.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

A system-oriented breakdown of all work activities required for a project phase; defines tasks, assigns responsibility, defines deliverables and receivables, estimates cost/time, monitors progress; task inventory; action-oriented, exhaustive, mutually exclusive; not a time-phased schedule or an organizational chart.

Product Breakdown Structure (PBS)

Visualization of the project’s deliverables; serves as the backbone for the WBS; used when the project produces tangible deliverables (e.g., a conference centre, a festival).

Statement of Work (SOW)

Contracting document derived from the WBS; elaborates and clarifies each task; uses precise language: 'shall' (mandatory), 'should' (desirable), 'may' (non-mandatory).

Deliverables

Measurable, tangible, verifiable items the project manager must provide to the customer; defined by specifications, quantity, delivery date, and delivery address; often require customer approval and may trigger payment.

Receivables

Inputs or permissions from the customer required to complete tasks; indispensable, outside the contractor’s control, within the customer’s control, generated during the project; examples include equipment, documentation, and go-ahead decisions.

Contingencies

Uncertainties beyond the control of both the task performer and the customer; managed as contingencies within the project plan.

Linkages

The WBS, Linear Responsibility Chart (LRC), deliverables, receivables, budget, and schedule must be coherently linked; each task has a responsible person; each deliverable is produced by a task; each receivable inputs a task; resources and costs are tied to WBS tasks.

Activity

A relatively small WBS element; a building block for planning; milestones are zero-duration activities; each activity has a unique identifier.

Activity-on-node diagram

Project network diagram where nodes represent activities and arrows indicate dependencies; relationships include finish-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-start, and start-to-finish.

Critical path

The longest path through the project network; determines the earliest possible completion date; has zero slack; delays on the critical path delay the project; may be multiple critical paths.

Slack

Also called float; the amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the project’s end date; calculated as Late Finish minus Early Finish or Late Start minus Early Start.

Gantt chart

Visual timeline of project activities showing durations and sequencing; used to display the project schedule.

Time management

Five processes to manage project duration: define activities, sequence activities, estimate durations, develop schedule, and control schedule; includes resource and calendar considerations.