Managing Technology-Based Projects: Tools, Techniques, People and Business Processes

Glossary

This glossary is just a small sample of acronyms and terms commonly used in project management. The listing is for reference only, and not intended to be comprehensive. One of the best ways to explore the meaning and application of a particular professional term is to search for its definition and application on the Internet. Many of the internet sites that explain the term also provide links to other related sources of information and knowledge.

A

Acceptance criteria Contractual requirements associated with project deliverables that must be met before the customer will sign-off on a deliverable item.

Activity A unit of work (also called task), defined by its scope, timeline, resource requirement and deliverable results. The specific role of an activity within the overall project is identified by its WBS number.

Actual cost (AC) Total cost actually incurred during a given work period.

Actual cost of work performed (ACWP) Resources expended so far (terminology of Earned Value Management, EVM).

Aggregate planning Incremental planning process that often provides more accuracy at the beginning of the planning cycle, but allows for more details and updating to be provided later in the execution.

Agile project management Projects execution in a highly flexible, adaptive and interactive manner (in opposite to waterfall method)

Assumptions Factors that are believed to be true, but not known to be true.

B

Backward pass PERT calculation determining the latest starting dates, backward ...