Project management terms

Ward, J. L. 2000. Dictionary of Project Management Terms, 3rd ed. Arlington, VA ESI International. This glossary summarizes the technical and nontechnical terminology used in the field of project management. It contains nearly 3,400 terms, phrases, and acronyms. 

The cheat/server model oftea allows easier iategratioa with other aetwork apphcatioas (eg, fiaance, project management, or human resources) which typically operate ia the environment of the server component of the cheat/server system. Gheat/server can be gradually iatroduced ia an existing minicomputer environment, often with httie adverse incremental impact ia terms of retraining and additional cost. 

Product realization in the automotive industry is either called advanced product quality planning (APQP) or project management. In terms of their objectives there is no difference. In terms of the mechanics there may be some differences, depending on the methodologies employed by the organization. 

A multidisciplinary approach is another term for a cross-functional team or a project team. Such teams comprise representatives from each line and staff department so that decisions are taken close to the development work by those who will need to implement the decisions or verify their implementation. Such teams facilitate communication and overcome delays that often occur when reliant upon line-staff relationships. If you have adopted the project management approach this requirement is not additional to that in clause 4.2.4.1. 

The coordination of this entire complex process is the province of project management, the objective of which is to ensure that all the necessary parts and components of a project mate up. This discipline in its modem form was first developed for the Polaris missile project in the 1960s. Its major tool that is familiar to pharmaceutical scientists is the network or PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique) chart, as illustrated in Figure 1.2. This chart is a tool that allows one to see and coordinate the relationships between the different components of a project. One outcome of the development of such a network is identification of the rate-limiting steps, which, in aggregate, comprise the critical path (see Table 1.3 for a lexicon of the terms used in project management). 

Step 1 Business value assessment Identify and quantify the business value for the proposed new method or analyzer. This is done jointly by the customer and the project manager. Ideally the value of the technology can be expressed concretely in monetary terms (e.g. dollars) as, for example, a net present value (NPV) or an internal rate of return (IRR). It is critical to include a realistic estimate of the costs of implementing and maintaining the analyzer, as weU as the benefits to be realized from it. This assessment is used to prioritize effort and expenses and to justify any capifal purchases needed. The various ways that process analyzers can connibute to business value are discussed in Section 15.2.2. 

Then we look at the way the components of these systems interact with each other. Once we understand these behaviors, we follow our integrated system approach in terms of looking at the project management system as processes, trying to satisfy customer requirements and also representing risks. 

Processes, in terms of quality project management, have visibility, documentation, and traceability. 

A well-conceived preproject plan should be developed to anticipate and account for such exigencies. The ideal plan would be in the form of a decision network showing the various paths from alternative decisions. The paths would be measured and weighted in terms of the probabilities of completing them in a prescribed time. For every alternative outcome at each of the decision points, a path should lead to the completion of stockpile destruction by the CWC treaty date. If a path does not meet the treaty date, then either the decisions on that path must be made earlier or that path must be eliminated from consideration. For a path to be viable, the decisions on that path must be within the authority of project managers or steps must be taken as soon as possible to correct this situation. 

Let me now tie this in with our near-term project management activities. 

Close collaboration between the Project Manager, the project team and those involved in the organising of field and customer trials is necessary. This needs to be done in order to deliver the bulk material in time to meet certain deadlines. Examples include the need to have material available to spray crops during the growing season, having samples ready to go in to a long term testing trial for corrosion protection or available to produce a new paint formulation in a customer s plant and to use this at a trade show. 

The work breakdown structure is therefore a method of describing the work to be done in the project in terms of deliverables and the tasks to be accomplished. It involves defining major deliverables and accomplishments during the project and fisting a hierarchy of sub-deliverables and accomplishments. The deliverables and accomplishments are a sum of their sub components and the WBS is a sum of all the elements. A more detailed description of this can be found in any of the general books on Project Management [D-13]. 

There has been little or no monitoring of the effectiveness of management practices that have been implemented (Boesch et al, 2001 NRC, 2000). For example, the watersheds of Chesapeake Bay have had some of the most extensive efforts at repairing streams and riparian wedands of any area in the United States, but these efforts have been among the least monitored of all projects in terms of their effectiveness (Bernhardt et al, 2005 Palmer et al, 2005). Similarly, the effectiveness of best management practices as applied in the watersheds of the Chesapeake has received little or no assessment. 

The prime responsibility of contracting falls upon the Project Manager who must live with the selected contractor and make it perform. It behooves the Project Manager to take a very active participation in contracting activities and be thoroughly familiar with all contractual terms and conditions. 

A bid package must address commercial terms as well as technical details. The preparation of the commercial selection is the responsibility of the Contracts Engineer. The Project Manager assembles all the technical details and is responsible not only for the technical section but for the overall completeness of the package. After all, it is the Project Manager who has to live with the contractor and make it perform. 

Master and short-term itemized schedules and the discipline of tracking performance and making the contractors live up to their projections, especially the short-term ones. If a contractor cannot meet the goals of a short-term schedule, it will never meet the long-range schedules. The Project Manager has to take immediate action ... 

Investigator recruitment plan Availability of patients Project management Communication with sponsor Business terms Insurance... 

Project management software This is software that is receptive to presentation team input over time and that has capabilities to organize and structure the tasks associated with the group, often in the form of a Gantt chart. This is very specialized software and would be potentially useful for a team interested primarily in obtaining typical project management results in terms of PERT charts and the like. 

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