Project management definitions of fundamental terms

The discipline of project management (just like any other discipline) has a number of fundamental terms and definitions that characterize its essence. By learning project management definition of terms you can improve your understanding of the discipline and become a competent project manager. Below we give the definitions of terms that will help you better understand your project manager’s role.

• project: Project is a planned set of interrelated tasks and jobs for completion over a pre-defined period of time and within certain constraints and limitations, such as cost and scope.
• work: Work is a fixed amount of effort made to produce an outcome, complete a task, or accomplish a series of assignments defined at the same level in WBS (Work Breakdown Structure).
• Project management definition of task: Task is a simple job for completion within a specific period of time. Often tasks are combined into assignments which reflect responsibilities of an assignee.
• activity: Activity is a specified pursuit in which a person involved in a project tries to stimulate implementation of a task, process, or procedure through actual experience.
• risk: Risk can be considered as a combination of probabilities and outcomes that characterize event occurrence. Risk is an aspect to be identified, analyzed, estimated and controlled within implementation processes.
• issue: Project issue is an important problematic question that is in dispute and requires a solution.
• scope: Scope is a definition of work to be done for producing a deliverable at project completion. Often scope refers to all the tasks, processes and assignments required to deliver a project and produce a product.

• float: an estimated amount of project time within which a task can be postponed without causing any delay to other tasks and completion date. Project float is also known as " definition of slack".
• milestone: It is a preliminary scheduled event that represents completion of a deliverable (or task, process, procedure) or a series of related deliverables (or tasks, processes, procedures).

• critical path: It is a planned set of coherent processes and procedures to be accomplished on schedule for the purpose of completing the entire project on schedule.
• Project management definition of PERT: The Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is an efficient model for project planning and implementation designed to 1) define, 2) analyze and 3) implement tasks involved in completing a given project.

The listed definitions and terms will help you become more competent and better understand the project management discipline. Each of the terms characterizes one or another side of project planning and implementation. To efficiently put these terms in practice you need to use project management software. For example, you can try VIP Task Manager. This software allows using to-do lists, schedules, tasks, templates and timelines to plan, track, measure and report projects.