Free reference

200 project management terms, in plain English

Every term twice over: the definition PMI examines you on, and what it actually means when you are on a project or sitting the exam. This is the whole ofThe PM Phrase Book, as text. The same book is readable page by page if you prefer it that way.

Governance

26 terms

Project Charter: Document that formally authorizes a project and gives the PM authority to apply organizational resources; Your permission slip. Without this, the project doesn't officially exist and you have no power.
Business Case: Document providing justification for the project based on benefits vs. costs; The 'why should we spend money on this?' document. If you can't answer that, don't start.
Assumption Log: Record of all assumptions and constraints identified throughout the project; Things we're treating as true but haven't verified. These will bite you if you don't track them.
Project Management Plan: Document describing how the project will be executed, monitored, controlled, and closed; The master playbook. Not a schedule — it's the plan for how you'll manage everything.
Change Request: Formal proposal for modification to any document, deliverable, or baseline; Someone wants something different. This is the paperwork that prevents chaos.
Change Control Board: Group responsible for reviewing, evaluating, approving, or (CCB) rejecting changes; The committee that says yes or no. You don't approve scope changes alone.
Integrated Change Control: Process of reviewing all change requests, approving changes, and managing changes to deliverables and baselines; Every change — no matter how small — goes through one process. No exceptions.
Deliverable: Any unique and verifiable product, result, or capability produced to complete a process or project; The actual thing you're building or producing. What the customer pays for.
Work Performance Data: Raw observations and measurements identified during project activities; Raw numbers straight from the work. Hours logged, defects found, money spent. Unprocessed.
Work Performance Information: Performance data collected and analyzed in context; Data that's been analyzed and means something. 'We spent $50K' becomes 'We're 10% over budget.'
Work Performance Report: Physical or electronic representation of work performance information compiled for decision-making; The actual status report your sponsor reads. Decisions get made from this.
Lessons Learned: Knowledge gained during a project used to improve future performance; What went right, what went wrong, and what you'd do differently. Useless if not documented.
OPA (Organizational Process Assets): Plans, processes, policies, procedures, and knowledge bases specific to the organization; Your company's historical files, templates, and 'how we do things here' documents.
EEF (Enterprise Environmental Factors): Conditions not under the team's control that influence the project; Everything outside your control: market conditions, regulations, org culture, infrastructure.
Knowledge Management: Process of using existing knowledge and creating new knowledge to achieve project objectives; Capturing what people know (tacit) and what's written down (explicit) so it doesn't walk out the door.
Phase Gate: Review at the end of a phase to decide whether to continue, modify, or terminate; The checkpoint where leadership decides: keep going, pivot, or kill the project.
Governance: Framework of authority, accountability, and decision- making within a project; Who decides what, who reports to whom, and who has the authority to spend money or approve changes.
Quality Assurance: Process of auditing quality requirements and results from (QA) quality control measurements; Are we following the right processes? (Different from QC, which checks the actual deliverables.)
Quality Control (QC): Process of monitoring and recording results of executing quality activities; Does the actual deliverable meet requirements? Testing, inspection, review of the output.
Sourcing Strategy: Approach for make-or-buy decisions, vendor selection, and contract types; Do we build it ourselves or hire someone? And if we hire, what kind of contract protects us?
Progressive Elaboration: Iteratively increasing the level of detail in a project management plan as greater amounts of information become available; You can't know everything on day one. Details emerge as you go. Plan in waves, not all upfront.
Configuration Management: System for tracking and controlling changes to project artifacts; Version control for project documents. Who changed what, when, and which version is the official one.
Rolling Wave Planning: Iterative planning technique where near-term work is planned in detail and future work at a higher level; Plan the next 2-4 weeks in detail. Months 3-6? High level only. Details come later when you know more.
Procurement Audit: Review of the procurement process from planning through contract administration; Did we follow our own procurement rules? Were vendors selected fairly? Were contracts managed properly?
Claims Administration: Process of processing, adjudicating, and communicating contract claims; When a vendor says 'you owe us more money' or 'that wasn't in the contract.' The dispute resolution process.
Make-or-Buy Analysis: Technique to determine whether work should be done internally or outsourced; Can we do it cheaper/better ourselves, or should we hire someone? Factor in risk, speed, IP, and capability.

Scope

20 terms

Scope: The sum of products, services, and results to be provided; What's included in the project — and equally important, what's NOT included.
Product Scope: Features and functions that characterize a product, service, or result; What the thing you're building actually does. The features list.
Project Scope: The work performed to deliver a product, service, or result with specified features; All the work needed to deliver the product scope. Includes PM activities, testing, deployment, etc.
Scope Baseline: Approved version of the scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary; The official, approved definition of what's in and out. Changes to this require formal approval.
WBS (Work Breakdown Structure): Hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work; Breaking the project into bite-sized pieces. The family tree of all deliverables. 100% of the work.
WBS Dictionary: Document providing detailed information about each WBS component; The details behind each box in the WBS: who's responsible, what it costs, how long, acceptance criteria.
Work Package: Lowest level of the WBS; the point at which cost and duration can be reliably estimated; The smallest chunk of work you plan and track. Small enough to estimate, assign, and control.
Requirements: Conditions or capabilities needed by a stakeholder to solve a problem or achieve an objective; What the customer actually needs. Not what they say they want — what they need to solve the problem.
Requirements Traceability Matrix: Grid linking requirements to their origin and tracing them throughout the project; Proof that every requirement has a deliverable and every deliverable has a test. Nothing falls through.
Scope Creep: Uncontrolled expansion of scope without adjustments to time, cost, or resources; Features sneaking in without anyone adjusting the schedule or budget. The silent project killer.
Gold Plating: Adding extra features or work not requested by the customer; Going above and beyond what was asked. Sounds nice. Never acceptable — deliver what was agreed.
Validate Scope: Process of formalizing acceptance of completed project deliverables; Getting the customer to officially sign off and say 'yes, this is what I asked for.' Different from QC.
Decomposition: Technique for dividing project scope into smaller, more manageable components; Breaking big things into small things until each piece is estimable and assignable.
MoSCoW: Prioritization technique: Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have; Sorting requirements into buckets: non-negotiable, important, nice-to- have, and not this time.
Scope Statement: Description of the project scope, major deliverables, assumptions, and constraints; The document that says 'here's what we're building' AND 'here's what we're NOT building.' Both matter equally.
Product Analysis: Technique for defining scope by analyzing the product description; Breaking down what the product needs to do to understand what work is required to build it.
Prototyping: Method of obtaining early feedback by providing a working model of the expected product; Build a rough version first, show it to stakeholders, learn from their reaction, then build the real thing.
Inspection: Examination of a work product to determine if it conforms to documented standards; Looking at the actual output and checking it against requirements. Visual review, walkthrough, audit.
Affinity Diagram: Technique for organizing large numbers of ideas into groups for analysis; Brainstorm everything on sticky notes, then group similar items together. Pattern emerges from chaos.
Benchmarking: Comparing actual or planned practices to those of comparable organizations; How does our approach compare to industry best practices or competitors? Where are the gaps?

Schedule

20 terms

Critical Path: Longest sequence of activities that determines the shortest possible project duration; The sequence of tasks where any delay pushes the end date. Zero wiggle room on these.
Float (Slack): Amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the project end date; How much cushion you have before this task affects the deadline. Zero float = critical path.
Free Float: Amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying successor activities; How much this specific task can slip without affecting the next task (not the whole project).
Crashing: Adding resources to critical path activities to compress the schedule; Throwing more people or money at the problem to finish faster. Costs more. Diminishing returns.
Fast-Tracking: Performing critical path activities in parallel instead of in sequence; Doing things at the same time that were supposed to be sequential. Faster but riskier — may need rework.
Resource Leveling: Adjusting the schedule to resolve resource over-allocation; Fixing the schedule so nobody is assigned to 3 tasks at once. May extend the end date.
Resource Smoothing: Adjusting activities within their float to optimize resource use; Shuffling tasks within their slack to even out workloads. Unlike leveling, does NOT change the end date.
Lead: Amount of time a successor activity can be advanced with respect to a predecessor; Starting the next task before the current one is done. Overlapping activities.
Lag: Amount of time a successor activity must be delayed after a predecessor; Waiting time between tasks. Like waiting for concrete to dry before you can build on it.
PERT: Three-point estimate: (Optimistic + 4×Most Likely + Pessimistic) ÷ 6; A weighted average that says 'the real answer is probably close to your best guess but accounts for risk.'
Milestone: Significant point or event in a project, usually with zero duration; A checkpoint — not a task. It marks when something important should be done. Takes zero time itself.
Velocity: Amount of work a team completes in one iteration (agile); How many story points the team actually finishes per sprint. Used to forecast future sprints.
Burn-down Chart: Graph showing work remaining versus time in an iteration; The line that should go down. If it's flat or going up, the team is in trouble.
Sprint: Fixed-length iteration in Scrum, typically 1-4 weeks; A time box where the team delivers a working increment. Same length every time. No extensions.
Gantt Chart: Bar chart showing activities plotted against time; The visual schedule most people think of when they hear 'project plan.' Bars = tasks, length = duration.
PDM (Precedence Diagramming Method): Technique for constructing a schedule model using nodes representing activities connected by dependencies; The network diagram. Boxes connected by arrows showing which tasks depend on which other tasks.
Forward Pass: Calculation of early start and early finish dates for all uncompleted activities; Starting from the beginning and calculating the earliest each task can start and finish.
Backward Pass: Calculation of late start and late finish dates for all uncompleted activities; Starting from the end date and working backward to find the latest each task can start without delaying the project.
Schedule Compression: Shortening the project schedule without reducing scope; Making the project finish faster. Only two ways: crashing (more resources) or fast-tracking (parallel work).
Iteration: Single development cycle in agile, producing a working increment; One loop through plan-build-review. Could be a sprint, could be any time-boxed cycle.

Finance

26 terms

BAC (Budget at Completion): Total planned budget for the project; How much we planned to spend total. The number everyone agreed to at the start.
PV (Planned Value): Authorized budget assigned to scheduled work; How much work we planned to have done by now, in dollars. The plan's expectation at this point in time.
EV (Earned Value): Measure of work performed expressed in terms of the budget authorized; How much work we actually completed, measured in planned dollars. What we earned by doing the work.
AC (Actual Cost): Realized cost incurred for the work performed; How much we actually spent. Cold hard cash out the door.
CV (Cost Variance): EV minus AC; positive = under budget; Are we over or under budget? Positive is good, negative means you've overspent.
SV (Schedule Variance): EV minus PV; positive = ahead of schedule; Are we ahead or behind? Positive is good, negative means you're behind where you should be.
CPI (Cost Performance Index): EV divided by AC; greater than 1 = under budget; Getting more than $1 of work for every $1 spent = good. Less than $1 = burning money.
SPI (Schedule Performance Index): EV divided by PV; greater than 1 = ahead; Completing more work than planned = good. Less = you're falling behind the plan.
EAC (Estimate at Completion): Expected total cost when all work is done; What we NOW think the project will actually cost. Usually BAC ÷ CPI. Reality check on the budget.
ETC (Estimate to Complete): Expected cost to finish remaining work; EAC minus AC; How much more money we need to finish from this point forward.
VAC (Variance at Completion): BAC minus EAC; positive = expected under budget; Will we finish over or under budget? The crystal ball number for the final bill.
TCPI (To-Complete Performance Index): (BAC−EV) ÷ (BAC−AC); above 1 = must improve; The efficiency you MUST achieve on all remaining work to hit the original budget. Above 1 = painful.
Contingency Reserve: Budget for identified risks, included in the cost baseline; Money set aside for risks you know about. The PM can use this without asking permission.
Management Reserve: Budget for unknown risks, NOT part of the cost baseline; Money set aside for surprises nobody saw coming. Only the sponsor can release this.
Cost Baseline: Approved time-phased budget excluding management reserve; The official spending plan over time. Estimates + contingency. This is what you're measured against.
Sunk Cost: Money already spent that cannot be recovered; Money that's gone. Should NEVER influence future decisions. 'We already spent $2M' is not a reason to continue.
Opportunity Cost: Value of the next best alternative not chosen; What you gave up by choosing this project instead of another. Always exists when choosing between options.
NPV (Net Present Value): Sum of discounted future cash flows minus initial investment; Is this project worth more than the money we put in, accounting for the time value of money? Positive = yes.
IRR (Internal Rate of Return): Discount rate that makes NPV equal to zero; The return percentage this project generates. Higher = better. Must beat your company's hurdle rate.
BCR (Benefit-Cost Ratio): Total benefits divided by total costs; above 1.0 = benefits exceed costs; For every $1 we spend, how many dollars of benefit do we get? Above 1.0 or don't do the project.
Funding Limit Reconciliation: Comparing planned expenditures against funding constraints; Making sure you don't plan to spend $500K in March when the CFO only releases $200K per month.
Cost Aggregation: Summing lower-level cost estimates to establish an authorized cost baseline; Adding up all the individual estimates to get the total. Bottom-up math.
Analogous Estimating: Using historical data from similar projects as a basis for estimating; This project is like the last one, which cost $2M, so this one is probably around $2M too. Fast but rough.
Parametric Estimating: Using statistical relationships between historical data and other variables; If painting one room costs $500, painting 10 rooms costs ~$5,000. Math-based estimation.
Bottom-Up Estimating: Estimating duration or cost by aggregating estimates from lower-level components; Estimate every single work package, then add them all up. Most accurate. Most time-consuming.
Three-Point Estimating: Using optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic estimates to define an approximate range; Best case + worst case + realistic = a range that accounts for uncertainty. PERT formula.

Stakeholders

19 terms

Stakeholder: Individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself affected by a project; Anyone who cares about your project, is impacted by it, or thinks they are. Wider than you think.
Stakeholder Register: Document identifying stakeholders, interests, involvement, and influence; Your master list of who matters, what they care about, and how much power they have.
Stakeholder Engagement: Process of involving stakeholders in project decisions and execution; Keeping people informed, involved, and aligned. Not just sending emails — actually engaging.
Power/Interest Grid: Classification model mapping stakeholder power against interest level; The 2×2 that tells you who to manage closely (high power, high interest) and who to just monitor.
Salience Model: Classification using power, legitimacy, and urgency to determine stakeholder importance; Three circles that identify which stakeholders deserve most attention based on their authority, claim, and time pressure.
Engagement Assessment Matrix: Grid comparing current vs. desired engagement level for each stakeholder; Where each stakeholder IS vs. where you NEED them to be. C = current, D = desired. Close the gap.
Communication Channels Formula: n(n-1)/2 where n = number of people; 10 people = 45 channels. Add one person = 55. That's why big teams have communication problems.
Push Communication: Sending information to recipients who may or may not read it; Emails, reports, memos. You push it out. No guarantee anyone reads it.
Pull Communication: Recipients access information at their discretion; Intranet, shared drives, dashboards. It's there when they want it. They have to go get it.
Interactive Communication: Real-time, multidirectional exchange of information; Meetings, calls, face-to-face. Best for complex topics. Immediate feedback. Hardest to scale.
Active Listening: Fully concentrating on what is being said, understanding, responding, and remembering; Actually hearing what someone says, not just waiting for your turn to talk. Paraphrase to confirm.
Noise: Anything that interferes with the transmission or understanding of a message; Whatever gets in the way of communication: jargon, assumptions, distractions, cultural differences.
Issue Log: Document recording issues, owners, target resolution dates, and status; The list of current problems that need to be solved. Not risks (future) — issues are happening NOW.
Communication Model: Framework showing how information is transmitted between sender and receiver; Sender encodes → transmits → receiver decodes. Noise interferes at every step. Feedback confirms receipt.
Communication Styles Assessment: Technique to identify preferred communication approaches for each stakeholder; Some people want emails. Some want meetings. Some want dashboards. Figure out who wants what.
Interpersonal Skills: Skills used to establish and maintain relationships with other people; Active listening, empathy, cultural awareness, negotiation, conflict management. The soft skills that aren't soft.
Negotiation: Process of reaching agreement through discussion and compromise; Finding a solution both parties can live with. Not winning — finding mutual ground.
Political Awareness: Understanding of formal and informal power relationships within the organization; Knowing who really makes decisions (not just who's on the org chart) and how to navigate that.
Cultural Awareness: Understanding of differences between individuals, groups, and organizations and adapting behavior accordingly; Not everyone communicates, decides, or works the same way. Especially on global projects.

Resources

18 terms

RACI Matrix: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed — role assignment chart; Who does it (R), who owns it (A — only ONE per row), who to ask (C), and who to tell (I).
Servant Leadership: Practice of leading through service to the team; Your job is to remove obstacles, not assign tasks. Help the team succeed, don't manage them.
Lead the Team: Process of guiding, developing, and managing the team (renamed from Manage Team); Develop skills, resolve conflicts, give feedback. The name change signals: lead, don't control.
Tuckman Model: Team development stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Adjourning; Every team goes through awkward (Forming), conflict (Storming), cohesion (Norming), then productivity (Performing).
Psychological Safety: Belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up; Team members feel safe to take risks, ask questions, and admit mistakes without fear. Essential for performance.
Virtual Teams: Groups of people with shared objectives who collaborate remotely; Team members not in the same room. Need extra effort on communication, trust, and collaboration tools.
Resource Histogram: Bar chart showing resource usage over time; Visual showing who is allocated when. Tall bars = overloaded. Look for peaks that need leveling.
Colocation: Placing team members in the same physical location; Everyone in the same room or building. Maximizes communication. The 'war room' approach.
Generalizing Specialist: Person with one or more specialties plus broad knowledge across the domain; Someone who's an expert at one thing but can do many things. The agile ideal — T-shaped skills.
Expert Power: Influence based on knowledge, skills, or expertise; People follow you because you know what you're doing. Most effective power type for PMs.
Referent Power: Influence based on personal charisma and relationships; People follow you because they like and respect you. Second most effective for PMs.
Coercive Power: Influence based on ability to punish; People comply because they're afraid. Least effective. Creates resentment. Never the right exam answer.
Motivation Theories: Frameworks explaining what drives human behavior (Maslow, Herzberg, McGregor); Maslow: hierarchy of needs. Herzberg: hygiene vs. motivators. McGregor: Theory X (lazy) vs. Y (self-driven).
Team Charter: Document recording team values, agreements, and operating guidelines; The team's own rules: how we make decisions, how we communicate, what we expect of each other.
Recognition and Rewards: Formal or informal acknowledgment of desired behavior or performance; Saying thank you. Publicly or privately. Money, time off, or just acknowledgment. Hugely underused.
Training: Activities designed to enhance the competencies of team members; Building skills the team needs but doesn't have. Courses, workshops, mentoring, self-study.
Ground Rules: Expectations regarding acceptable behavior for project team members; The agreed-upon norms: cameras on in meetings, respond to Slack within 4 hours, etc.
Organizational Structure: How authority and responsibility are arranged (functional, matrix, projectized); Functional = PM has no authority. Matrix = shared authority. Projectized = PM has full authority.

Risk

25 terms

Risk: Uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect; Something that MIGHT happen. Can be bad (threat) or good (opportunity). Not an issue — it hasn't happened yet.
Threat: Risk event that would have a negative impact; Bad thing that might happen. You want to prevent, reduce, or prepare for it.
Opportunity: Risk event that would have a positive impact; Good thing that might happen. You want to make it more likely or be ready to capitalize on it.
Risk Register: Document recording identified risks, analysis results, and response plans; The master list of everything that could go wrong (or right), how likely it is, and what you'll do about it.
Probability × Impact: Grid for prioritizing risks based on their probability and (P×I) Matrix impact ratings; Multiply how likely it is by how bad it would be. High score = pay attention. Low score = monitor.
EMV (Expected Monetary Value): Probability × monetary impact of a risk; If there's a 30% chance of losing $100K, the EMV is -$30K. Used for decision trees and reserves.
Monte Carlo Simulation: Statistical technique using random sampling to model uncertainty; Running the schedule 10,000 times with random variations to find the probability of finishing by a date.
Avoid: Risk response eliminating the threat by changing the plan; Change the plan so the risk can't happen. Remove the cause entirely.
Mitigate: Risk response reducing the probability or impact of a threat; Make it less likely or less damaging. Plan B that softens the blow.
Transfer: Risk response shifting impact to a third party; Make it someone else's problem. Insurance, warranties, fixed-price contracts.
Accept: Risk response acknowledging the risk without proactive action; Active accept = set aside contingency. Passive accept = do nothing and deal with it if it happens.
Escalate: Risk response for risks outside the PM's authority; Not your call. Raise it to program, portfolio, or executive level. New formal strategy in the 8th edition.
Exploit: Risk response ensuring a positive risk occurs; Make the opportunity happen for sure. Assign the best resources, accelerate the timeline.
Enhance: Risk response increasing the probability or impact of an opportunity; Make the good thing more likely or bigger. Add resources, adjust timing, increase exposure.
Share: Risk response allocating opportunity ownership to a best- positioned party; Partner with someone better positioned to capitalize on the opportunity. Joint ventures.
Risk Appetite: Degree of uncertainty an organization is willing to accept; How much risk is the company comfortable living with? Drives all risk decisions.
Risk Tolerance: Measurable amount of risk an organization is willing to withstand; The specific threshold: 'We can tolerate up to $500K in overruns.' Quantified version of appetite.
Risk Threshold: Level of risk exposure above which risks are addressed and below which accepted; The line in the sand. Above this = take action. Below this = accept and monitor.
Residual Risk: Risk remaining after risk responses have been implemented; What's left after you've done everything you planned to do. The leftover risk you live with.
Secondary Risk: Risk that arises as a direct result of implementing a risk response; Your fix created a new problem. Hired a contractor to mitigate (transfer), now you have vendor risk.
Sensitivity Analysis: Technique determining which risks have the most impact on the project; Tornado diagram: which risks move the needle most? Focus your energy on the big bars.
Risk Report: Document presenting information on overall project risk and individual risks; The big picture: are we in good shape or are risks accumulating? Summary for leadership.
Decision Tree: Diagram showing the sequence of interrelated decisions and expected results; Branching diagram where each choice leads to outcomes with probabilities and values. Helps pick the best path.
Workaround: Response to a threat that has occurred for which no prior response was planned; The risk happened and you didn't plan for it. Now you're improvising. Fix it in real time.
Risk Trigger: Event or situation that indicates a risk is about to occur or has occurred; The early warning sign. 'If the vendor misses two consecutive deadlines, the delivery risk is materializing.'

Agile & Hybrid

23 terms

Agile: Iterative approach delivering value incrementally through short cycles with continuous feedback; Build a little, show it, get feedback, adjust, repeat. Embrace change instead of fighting it.
Scrum: Agile framework using sprints, defined roles, and ceremonies for product development; The most popular agile framework. Sprint-based, with Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Dev Team roles.
Kanban: Method for managing work by visualizing flow and limiting work in progress; Board with columns (To Do → Doing → Done). Limit how many items can be 'Doing' at once. Continuous flow.
Product Owner: Person responsible for maximizing value by managing the product backlog; The one person who decides what gets built and in what order. Owns the backlog. NOT the PM.
Scrum Master: Servant leader responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum; Coaches the team on agile, removes impediments, facilitates ceremonies. NOT a project manager.
Product Backlog: Ordered list of everything needed in the product; The master wish list, prioritized by value. Product Owner owns it. Always changing, never 'done.'
Sprint Backlog: Set of product backlog items selected for the sprint plus the plan for delivering them; What the team committed to THIS sprint. Owned by the dev team. Don't add to it mid-sprint.
Definition of Done: Shared understanding of what 'complete' means for a (DoD) deliverable; The team's checklist. Coded, tested, reviewed, documented = done. If it's not in the DoD, it's not done.
User Story: Short description of functionality from the user's perspective: 'As a [role], I want [feature], so that [benefit]'; A requirement written as a real person's need. Not technical specs — business language.
Story Points: Relative measure of effort, complexity, and uncertainty for a user story; Not hours. Not days. Relative sizing. If that task is a 3, this one is probably an 8. Fibonacci scale.
WIP Limit: Maximum number of work items allowed in a workflow state at any time; Stop starting, start finishing. If your WIP limit is 3, you can't pull a 4th item until one is done.
Information Radiator: Visible display of information that makes status transparent to anyone walking by; Big visible charts on the wall (or virtual board) that show how things are going. No hiding.
Timebox: Fixed period of time during which an activity occurs; A hard deadline that doesn't move. The meeting is 15 minutes, the sprint is 2 weeks. Period.
Increment: Sum of all product backlog items completed during a sprint that meets the Definition of Done; The working product after each sprint. Should be potentially shippable. Each sprint adds to it.
Hybrid: Approach combining predictive and adaptive elements; Mix and match. Waterfall governance with agile delivery. Fixed milestones with sprint-based work. Most real projects.
SAFe: Scaled Agile Framework — methodology for scaling agile across large organizations; Agile for enterprises with hundreds of people. Adds layers: teams, trains, solutions, portfolio.
Retrospective: Team meeting to reflect on what went well, what didn't, and what to improve; The most important agile ceremony. If you skip this, you stop improving. Hold it every sprint.
Empirical Process Control: Process control based on observation and experimentation rather than upfront definition; Transparency + inspection + adaptation. See what's happening, assess it, adjust. The agile foundation.
Continuous Integration: Practice of merging code changes frequently, verified by automated builds and tests; Developers push code multiple times a day. Automated tests catch problems immediately. No 'big bang' integration.
Technical Debt: Implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of a better approach; The shortcuts that will cost you later. Like a credit card — convenient now, expensive if you don't pay it off.
Spike: Time-boxed research or prototyping task to answer a question or reduce uncertainty; We don't know enough to estimate this. Spend 2 days researching, then come back with an answer.
Epic: Large body of work that can be broken down into smaller stories; A big feature or initiative. Too large for one sprint. Break it into user stories that fit.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Version of a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback; The smallest thing you can build that someone will actually use and give you feedback on. Not a prototype — it works.

Sustainability & AI

23 terms

Sustainability Pyramid: Framework defining project value across economic, environmental, and social dimensions; Success isn't just 'on time, on budget.' It's also 'did we harm the environment? did we help people?'
ESG: Environmental, Social, and Governance — framework for sustainable business practices; The three pillars organizations use to measure impact beyond profit. Increasingly required by regulators.
Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet, Profit — framework for measuring organizational success; Business success measured three ways: social impact, environmental impact, and financial results.
AI Automation: Low-complexity AI tasks requiring little human review; Meeting summaries, report generation, document analysis. Set it and (mostly) forget it.
AI Assistance: Medium-complexity AI tasks requiring iterative refinement; Risk registers, schedule drafts, cost estimates. AI gives you a starting point. You must review and refine.
AI Augmentation: High-complexity AI tasks using AI as a strategic brainstorming partner; Portfolio optimization, risk forecasting, scenario analysis. AI thinks WITH you through multiple iterations.
AI Hallucination: AI generating plausible but incorrect information; When AI confidently makes stuff up. Always validate AI output before using it in project artifacts.
Responsible AI: Ethical framework for AI use addressing bias, privacy, accountability, and transparency; Using AI thoughtfully: check for bias, protect data, keep humans accountable, tell people when AI is involved.
PMI Infinity: PMI's AI tool for project professionals with prompt library; PMI's official AI assistant. Includes ready-made prompts for common PM tasks. Referenced in PMBOK 8th ed.
Tailoring: Deliberate adaptation of approach, governance, and processes for the project context; Not every project needs every process. Pick what works, skip what doesn't, document why.
Bias (AI): Systematic errors in AI output caused by biased training data or algorithms; The AI learned from flawed data and now gives flawed answers. Diversify data, test regularly, involve diverse teams.
Prompt Engineering: Technique of crafting effective inputs to AI systems to get useful outputs; Asking AI the right question the right way. Garbage in = garbage out. Good prompts = good results.
Data Privacy (AI): Protection of sensitive information used in or generated by AI systems; Your project data might be used to retrain AI models. Paid tools let you restrict this. Free tools often don't.
Copyright (AI): Ownership questions regarding content generated by AI systems; Who owns what AI produces? Still legally unclear. The PMBOK says consider the level of human involvement.
CPMAI: Cognitive Project Management in AI — PMI certification for AI in PM; PMI's official AI certification for project managers. Signals that AI competency is becoming a professional expectation.
Cost of Quality (CoQ): Total cost of conformance (prevention + appraisal) and non-conformance (internal + external failure); Spend money preventing defects upfront, or spend MORE money fixing them later. Prevention is always cheaper.
PDCA Cycle: Plan-Do-Check-Act — continuous improvement cycle; Try something, measure it, see if it worked, adjust. Repeat forever. The engine of continuous improvement.
Compliance: Adherence to laws, regulations, standards, and organizational policies; Following the rules — both external (government) and internal (company policy). Non-negotiable on the exam.
Benefits Management Plan: Document defining how benefits will be created, maximized, and sustained; How do we make sure the project actually delivers the value it promised? And who tracks it after we're done?
Business Value: Net quantifiable benefit derived from a business endeavor; What the organization actually gets from doing this project. Money, time, capability, competitive advantage.
Organizational Change Management: Framework for managing the people side of change to achieve business outcomes; The project delivers a system. OCM makes sure people actually USE the system. Technology is easy; people are hard.
Kotter's 8 Steps: Model for leading organizational change through urgency, coalition, vision, and anchoring; Create urgency, build a team, define the vision, communicate it, remove obstacles, get wins, build on them, make it stick.
ADKAR Model Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement: Change management model: Awareness, Desire,; Five things every person needs to change: know WHY, WANT to, know HOW, CAN do it, and it STICKS.

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