Project Management Terms and Concepts

List of Project Management Terms and Concepts

No matter you are trying to find some basic project management terms or looking to understand the key differences between the key project management concepts, you are in the right page. There are some basic terms that can be understandable by the people who are out of the field of project management. However, there are some terms and concepts that most of the project management professionals can find difficult to understand. In this article, we collected a list of popular project management terms, concepts, and their definitions.

Top 40 Project Management Terms, Concepts and Definitions

Like other disciplines and professions, project management has its own terminologies and concepts. While reading this article, you will see that some ordinary words have acquired a technical meaning over time. However, some of them are specific to the field of project management. Here below you can find a list of project management terms, concepts and their definitions.

Activity

Activities are the smallest units of works that form tasks. An activity is a component of task that should be performed during the project work.

Activity Sequencing

Activity sequencing is determining the relationships and dependencies of activities while creating a project schedule or a project network diagram. Activity and activity sequencing are widely used project management terms in scheduling. See: precedence diagram method

Agile is an iterative approach in project management to deliver the projects. Agile project management relies on agile principles to demonstrate behaviours of trust, flexibility and collaboration.

Assumptions

In project management, an assumption is a factor that is believed to be true while managing a project. Assumptions analysis is performed during the risk management processes.

Baseline

A baseline is the original or target plan. Baseline Schedule and Baseline Cost are created to understand how much the current status has deviated from the original plan.

Bottom-up Estimating

Bottom-up estimating is a technique which is performed at the lowest level of detail. It is the process of estimating individual components and gathering up them to estimate the overall budget or duration of a project.

Budget

As a project management term, a project budget is an estimate that outlines the projects direct costs and indirect costs.

Burn Down Chart



A burndown chart is a tool that demonstrates outstanding work versus time.  In other words, it shows the remaining works toward the project completion.

Business Plan

A business plan is a strategic document that describes the project goals and the steps to reach the goals.

CAPM Certification

CAPM is one of the most popular project management concepts. CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management) is a worldwide certification which demonstrates the knowledge of the individual about the strategies and the terminologies included in the PMI’s PMBOK Guide.

Change Management

Change management is the process of identifying, documenting, approving and managing changes throughout the project life cycle.

Contingency Plan

A contingency plan is referred to as plan B which is applied when the Plan A fails.

Cost Variance (CV)

The cost variance shows how much the actual costs deviate from the budgeted costs.

Critical Path Method (CPM)

The critical path method is one of the most important project management terms in that list. The critical path method is a project management technique which shows the path of the activities that must be completed on time in order to complete the project without delays. If there is a delay on the critical path, the project will delay.

Dependencies

Dependencies are the logical relationships between the activities. They show which activity is the predecessor and which one is the successor in order to model the sequence of work.

Earned Value Management (EVM)

Earned Value Management is a performance measurement technique which incorporates schedule and cost measurements to understand if the project is performing well or poorly.

Estimate At Completion (EAC)

Estimate at completion is a forecasting method which provides you the forecasted cost of the project when it is completed.

Fast Tracking

Fast-tracking is a schedule compression technique which changes the logic to perform the activities in parallel in order to compress the schedule.

Gantt Chart



Gantt chart is a project management concept in project planning and scheduling. Gantt Chart is a project scheduling tool that shows the activities on the vertical axis and the timeline on the horizontal axis. Activities are illustrated as bars and the length of the activity shows the duration.

Indirect Costs

Indirect costs are the costs that are not directly attributable to the cost of physical project activity. Overhead Costs, taxes, security costs, insurance, and administration costs are examples of indirect costs.

Kickoff Meeting

A kickoff meeting is the first meeting between the project team and the client while starting a new project or starting a new phase of a multi-phased project.

Meeting Agenda

A meeting agenda is a list of all the topics to be discussed during the meeting created to provide the participants prior notice of what will be talked about.

Milestone

A milestone is a tool used to specify a major event in the project’s lifecycle. In the project schedule, it can be used as Start Milestone and Finish Milestone to mark beginning or competion date of a major phase of work or an event.

Monte Carlo Simulation

Monte Carlo Simulation is a visual technique which is used to understand the impact of risk and uncertainty in while forecasting models.

Organizational Process Assets

Organizational Process Assets are the procedures, handbooks, contracts, registers, templates of an organization that are used while conducting the business of an organization.

PERT Estimation

PERT Estimation (also known as three-point estimation) is an estimate calculated by a weighted average of optimistic, pessimistic and the most likely estimates.

PMBOK Guide

Most probably, the PMBOK Guide is the most popular project management term. The PMBOK Guide is a guide which includes the practices, terms, strategies and project management processes and knowledge areas.

PRINCE2 Certification

PRINCE2 is a certification which is administered by the Accrediting Professional Managers Globally. There are two levels: Practitioner and Foundation.

Quality Management Plan

A quality management plan is a comprehensive plan which includes quality policies and procedures to describe how quality will be managed throughout the project’s life cycle. It includes the customer satisfaction criteria, stakeholder expectations and quality assurance activities.

RACI Matrix

RACI Matrix ( also known as the responsibility assignment matrix) is a matrix describes the roles ad responsibilities of the people involved in a project.

Resource Allocation

Resource allocation is the process of assigning labor, equipment, material resources to project activities to ensure succcessful completion of each task and the whole project.

Resource Leveling

Resource Leveling is an optimization process adjusting the project schedule considering the resource limits.

Risk Register

The risk register is an essential tool in risk management which is used to document project risks and the actions to deal with them. Risk register is a popular project management term in risk management.

Risk Owner

A Risk Owner is someone who coordinates efforts to manage project risks. He is responsible for identifying, evaluating, implementing mitigation strategies and monitoring.

Scope Creep

Scope creep refer to the uncontrolled changes in the scope of the project. If it is not controlled, it will have harmful effects on the project.

Scrum

Scrum is an agile framework which helps project teams to work together to develop high quality products.

Stakeholder



A stakeholder is an individual or an organization that has interests in the project’s outcome and deliverables.

Total Float

The total float can be defined as the amount of time that an activity can be delayed without delaying the project’s completion date.

Waterfall Model

The waterfall model is a traditional methodology in which activities are divided into linear non-overlapping phases.

Work Breakdown Structure

The work breakdown structure is a hierarchical breakdown of the project deliverables required to complete the project. It divides the project deliverables into smaller but manageable work packages.

Why Should You Know About The Project Management Terms and Concepts?

Project management, in the most general sense, can be defined as initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the project by meeting the project-specific goals. Therefore, it requires a set of important skills and expertise for the success of a project. It is essential for project teams to know the basic project management terms and definitions well to ensure everybody speaks the same language in the workplace.

Conclusion

Every profession and course have their own terminologies, so the same goes for project management. The project management terms and concepts refer to important meanings and practices to standardize the project’s processes.

See Also

Emotional intelligence in leadership

How to manage a project

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2 Comments
  1. Avatar for Alex Shadwell
    Alex Shadwell 3 years ago

    Well written article, terminology must be known well for someone who is interested in this area and this area could be helpful.

  2. Avatar for Deisy STEPHANS
    Deisy STEPHANS 3 years ago

    everyone must be closer to Project Management Terms and Concepts.

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