Project Management Glossary
24 terms, defined the way a practitioner would explain them to a colleague.
- Baseline
- The approved version of scope, schedule or cost against which performance is measured. Changed only through change control.
- Burndown chart
- Remaining work plotted against time in a sprint or release; the slope forecasts the completion date.
- Charter
- The document that authorises the project and grants the project manager authority to spend resources.
- Contingency reserve
- Budget or time set aside for identified risks, controlled by the project manager.
- Critical path
- The longest dependent sequence of activities; determines the minimum project duration.
- Definition of Done
- The shared checklist an increment must satisfy before it can be called complete.
- Earned Value (EV)
- The budgeted cost of work actually completed to date.
- Float (slack)
- How long an activity can be delayed without delaying the project end date.
- Gold plating
- Adding unrequested features or polish; unpaid scope creep generated from inside the team.
- Increment
- A usable, potentially releasable slice of the product produced within a single iteration.
- Issue
- A risk that has materialised, or a present problem requiring resolution.
- Milestone
- A zero-duration marker of a significant point or event in the schedule.
- Product backlog
- The single ordered list of everything that might be needed in the product.
- RACI
- Responsibility matrix: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed.
- Risk register
- The living log of identified risks with owner, probability, impact, response and review date.
- Resource levelling
- Adjusting start and finish dates to fit resource availability, even if the project end date moves out.
- Resource smoothing
- Rescheduling activities within their float so resource limits are respected without changing the critical path.
- Rolling wave planning
- Planning near-term work in detail and distant work at a high level, refining as it approaches.
- Scope creep
- Uncontrolled expansion of scope without adjustment to time, cost and resources.
- Sprint goal
- The single objective a sprint serves, giving the team room to negotiate the details.
- Stakeholder
- Anyone who can affect, be affected by, or perceive themselves affected by the project.
- Triple constraint
- The interdependence of scope, time and cost, with quality as the consequence of squeezing them.
- Velocity
- Story points completed per sprint; a forecasting input for one team, never a cross-team metric.
- Work package
- The lowest level of the WBS: a deliverable that can be estimated, scheduled and owned.