Project Management Basic Key Terms - Part I (About)

Project Management Basic Key Terms - Part I (About)

Project: A temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product or service.

Project Manager: The person ultimately responsible for the success or failure of a project.

Accidental project manager: A person who is placed into the role of project manager by organizational necessity and chance, rather than by design or through choice of career path.

Solution Jumping: The tendency of people to talk about what to do before analysing the situation adequately, trying to develop a solution before thoroughly understanding the problem.

Project Stakeholder: Anyone who has a vested interest in your project. This group ordinarily includes those who stand to gain or lose through the success or failure of your project, those who participate in the execution of your project, and those who are affected by the outcomes of your project.

Punch List: A relatively small list of tasks that the project team needs to complete in order to close out the project.

Silo Mentality: When people in an organization tend to think first of the needs, interests, and goals of their individual departments, before the needs, interests, and goals of the organizations as a whole. Also known as silo thinking, the term derives from diagrams of multi-disciplined organizations, which ordinarily display functional departments in a vertical orientation. Team members who think exclusively in terms of their own work group are said to be thinking in “functional silos”, rather than in terms of what’s best across the entire project.