Project Management Lingo

Project Management LingoProject Management LingoProject management is a job that comes with a lot of jargon and terminology. Once you know what it all means, its pretty easy to follow the discussions and contribute effectively. It will boost your confidence at work if you can understand what everyone else is talking about, and help you get taken more seriously at work if you use the right terms yourself. Heres a guide to the project management terms that you should know. Risk Risk is a term that relates to what might go wrong with your project. For example, if you are building a new office block, the price of steel might go up, and that might have an effect on your budget. But it might not go up. Equally, if you are planning on hosting your annual corporate picnic outside, it might be fine weather, but it might rain. In short, a risk is something that hasnt happened yet. Its important to know what risks surround your project because then you can plan for them. You can put your Pl an B or contingency plans into action to try to avoid the risk happening in the first place. With the price of steel and the weather, theres not much you can actually do to stop them from happening, but you can make plans in case they do. For example, you could hire a marquee or stock up with umbrellas so that if it does rain on picnic day, people can still have a good time. Issue Issues and risks are often confused by project team members, and its important as a project manager to make sure you are talking about these subjects appropriately. A risk is something that hasnt happened yet, while an issue is something that has happened. Issues are just problems that your project team is facing. You might have seen it coming (and handled it as a risk to start with) or it might be completely unexpected. Either way, its happened now and you have to do something about it. Milestone Milestones are points in time that mark key moments during the project. They are often used for Start of a phaseEnd of a phaseEnd of a major piece of work or a big taskNoting a particular fixed-in-time deadlineImmovable dates on the plan Think of milestones as the kind of date that you would write on your calendar at home the big important moments in a project such as finishing the testing or the launch party. Milestones are one of the nine components of a Gantt chart, so youll see them on your project schedules displayed as a diamond. Sponsor Your project sponsor sits on the Project Board. They are the person who owns the project and they receive the benefits. For example, if you are launching a new IT system for the factory team to use, the Factory General Manager would be the project sponsor. The IT team would form part of the project team but they wouldnt take on a sponsorship role. The project sponsor is the person you can turn to when you need senior management direction. This could be ?in order to Unblock a problemFind some resourcesApprove the budgetMake decisionsAgree on the final specification And so on. The project manager effectively reports to the sponsor for the duration of the project, both in terms of line management structure and with weekly or monthly (or real-time) project reporting. Stakeholder Stakeholders are the other people involved in and affected by your project. Some projects will have wide stakeholder groups, covering every department in the organization. Others will have a more limited scope. Some stakeholders are outside your organization, like the government or regulatory bodies. They also need to be kept informed with news that is relevant. Most stakeholders will be supportive (or ambivalent) to the changes brought about by your project, but not all of them will be. Youll meet stakeholders who are not are going to welcome your project with open arms.