Are you new to project management or even just wondering what are some terminology so that you
can understand things a little bit better when you hear a whole bunch of project management terms? I
got you covered in this video. You stay tuned to the end of this video. I got something really cool
for you. Top 10 reasons why projects fail. It's a guide. You're going to want to check it out.
Hi. If you're new here, welcome. My name is Adriana Girdler and welcome to the best practical
project management channel out there in the world. On that note, are you excited to learn about top
10 project management terminology? I hope you are because guess what? We're going to get to it.
Projects. Let's start with the basics because if we don't understand this terminology, well, then
it's going to be difficult for you to understand any of the rest. So let's get this
really straight. It is an activity or an initiative that has a start and end date
with tasks to reach a specific outcome. It's usually temporary in nature. And not only that
usually brought together with a bunch of subject matter experts who are executing on those tasks.
I want to be really clear projects are not everyday work.
So if you have a task that you're repeating constantly over and over, that's not a project,
that's an everyday work task. So just note this whole start and end date is really key,
the temporary in nature to indicate that at the end, you have a specific deliverable
that you did not have when you started, but you now have it at the end. That's a project.
Project life cycle. This is going to be one of the most critical project terminologies
you really need to understand because all projects go through this life cycle. So let's
just get to the definition so you understand it more. It's a sequence of activities that a
project goes through and there's five distinct phases. There's initiation,
planning, execution, monitor and control, and closing. Now what's really cool is it
doesn't matter the project methodology you use. Whether it's a waterfall methodology,
and agile methodology, hybrid methodology, whatever it may be, they all go through
this stage. And so if you have that fundamental understanding, this is the framework of projects,
then you'll totally get it. So let's just go one step further because just the definition is great
and I'm glad you have it now, but I want you to have a little bit more understanding of it.
So a lot of people think projects are all about execution and it's not. That's why
this framework is important. It's really about initiating it. Then doing the planning around it,
getting all your key pieces of information. The executing part is then taking what you've done
over here with your team, and your kickoffs, and your sponsors and you execute it. And then with
the monitoring control, what's really cool and what people don't understand and realize is that
there's an iteration that happens here. So you go your planning, executing, your moderate control,
and then you may find something changes. You have to tweak a plan, a timeline, and it just goes
through over and over. This whole cyclical aspect of planning, execution and control,
sorry, execution, monitor and control. You go over and over until you get to the actual end.
Now people do forget about the end and they don't close things out properly. So
in order to really do well in project management, understand the project life cycle,
understand the stages. And with every stage there are specific
tasks that you do. And it's something that I recommend you get to know really well.
Okay. Before I get into this definition, don't forget to stick around to the end of this video,
where I'm going to share with you how to get your hands on my top 10 project mistakes checklist.
You definitely have to stay in tune for that. Now let's go to this definition, kickoff meeting.
Oh, this is a critical component of all projects, is the kickoff meeting. It's the first meeting
at the beginning of a project with stakeholders and team members. Now what's really important is
your kickoff meeting is not the first thing that you do. What? But it's the first meeting. Yes.
It's the first meeting that you bring everyone together once you've done all your preparatory
work. Remember in the stages we said before, in planning, this kickoff meeting happens at
the end of planning right before execution. So there's still a lot that you have to do.
So in this kickoff meeting, what are you doing? You're confirming the charter that you
created. You are setting up expectations. You're probably even doing a little bit of
action planning with the team because you're using your kickoff meeting really as a working session
and maybe even a workshop. There's some really cool things that you can do. I got you covered
though. So if you want to know a little bit more about this, go to the YouTube search bar,
Adriana Girdler kickoff meetings, and there's a lot more great information that you can check out.
Triple constraint, also known as the project management triangle or project priority matrix,
because it takes some concepts of this. So let's get into this definition. It's the three primary
constraints that all of us project managers have to abide by and should definitely be familiar
with. And that is scope. That is what is it that your project is doing? Time, when are you going
to get it done in? And cost or budget, how much is it going to cost for you to do all of this?
This is what you're constantly managing. As a project manager, if you want to very quickly say,
what does a project manager do? It's monitor and manage scope, time, and budget. And whenever I
talk to my team and I try to course correct them, it's always about scope, time, and budget. You
don't want to oversee it on scope. You don't want to exceed on time and you want to within
your cost. So this is what we're always trying to balance and it's known as that triple constraint.
Project charter. Oh, this is a critical, critical document all projects must have. In fact,
if you're asked to join a project or you're asked to provide input on a project,
the first thing you should ask for is can I see your project charter please? Okay. So
what exactly is it? It's a document that lays out all the important info to fully understand
all key elements of the project. As I said, it's the most important project document, particularly
during initiation and planning stages. So what goes into this document? Everything
from the scope statement to what's in and out, to high level milestones, to priority project matrix,
roles and responsibilities, who's on your team, major milestones, not detailed timelines,
but major milestones. Anything that's going to help people who are joining your project,
which by the way, you're going to use this charter at your kickoff meeting, you're going to introduce
it to everybody. So they have an understanding of what's expected for them. You want the deliverable
in that as well. This document is gold. I cannot tell you how critical it is to have this document.
Now, speaking of gold, if you're loving what you're hearing, please give this video a thumbs
up. It tells YouTube we're doing a good job, which spreads our channel and messaging to more people
like yourself. So I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Scope creep, warning, warning, warning, warning,
warning. Do not do scope creep. Okay. What is scope creep? Let's talk about it. Its uncontrolled
changes to the scope due to interference from stakeholders or through misunderstandings. Whoa.
I bet you, once we talk about this, you'll go, oh my goodness. You know how many projects had
scope creep? This is where you have people outside of the project who don't understand the details
and are not privy to the project plan. Or it could even be senior executives.
People who say, oh, just add this one thing to it. And they want to expand the scope,
but they don't want to give you extra time, or more budget, or additional resources because in
their minds it's super easy. It's not. And it's your job as a project manager to make sure you
do not have scope creep. That's why you did the charter earlier on, to get everyone signed off on
the expectations of what the scope was. But scope creep will kill projects. It
will lead to misunderstandings. It can lead to lots of assumptions. And then
it really at the end, of people not being happy with the deliverable because
there was scope creep, they didn't understand things. So really, warning do not let this happen.
Now what you can do, as I said before, have it in the charter, have everyone sign off on that
document that I defined before and that's going to help you stop scope creep. Just be aware of it.
WBS or work breakdown structure. Now, if you have heard or seen any of my videos, I do talk about
the WBS. I actually have a really cool video. If you go to YouTube search bar, Adriana Girdler
and search work breakdown structure or WBS, it will pop up, to give you a lot more information.
But I want to share with you the definition. It's used to break down projects into smaller
chunks. So it's actually a technique that we as project managers use. When your given a scope
statement and you have this large deliverable, it can be slightly overwhelming. So the technique
we use is we break it down. We do a work breakdown structure into manageable chunks.
So how does that look like? Well, it's kind of very similar to an org chart that you can kind
of see here, right? You start at the top, which is the project. Then that's your level one. Your
level two is you then break things down, either through deliverables. Maybe you have multiple
deliverables. So you want to break it down that way. Maybe you want to break it down
by department. What does every department have to do? Or do you want to break it down through
subject matter experts? So you're breaking down into really more manageable chunks. Okay.
So for example, you may have a project of, we have to install a new packaging line.
Great. Perfect project, nothing wrong with that. All good. But that's a lot that you can do. So
how would you break it down into a level two? Well, I've done and install packaging lines. So
I have broke mine down through department because we had so many teams. I had a quality
department, engineering department, we had training department, we had production.
So you break it down and then once you do that, you go, okay, level three is for that big bucket,
what are the major activities that have to occur? Because this is now where everyone's sort of
getting into their role and responsibility. So for example, if I had engineering, they would start
breaking down all the major activities, purchasing of the equipment, testing of the equipment,
writing up of the documentations, like they're really getting into that level. So
now you have a really easy way and very quickly of understanding what your project's
all about and what are all the moving parts. Now what's really cool, this is a little bit
of a bonus for you, bonus tip, you could do a level four. And that level four is with
all the major activities. You can break down those major activities into detailed
tasks. And then use your WBS as an action plan. In fact, that's what I do. I call my action plan
a WBS, because I base it off of this. It's really a springboard off of this technique of breaking
down projects into manageable chunks so that you can successfully know what you have to execute.
Baseline. This is a very common terminology used amongst project managers.
You're baselining your original plan, which is around your scope, your project plan,
timelines, budget. So you're using it to measure the performance of your project.
Now, for example, with this one, this could be a budget baseline. So if this is what my baseline is
and that's what we agree to, you can see all the ups and downs, you're monitoring through
your project management tools and techniques. But again, you have baselines for
practically that triangle that we showed earlier remember? The scope baseline, has anything
changed? Timeline baseline, budget baseline. It just really ensures and a nice way to know,
are you on track, not on track, what deviated? So in the future, if you have a similar project,
you would refer back to your original baseline that you did in another project to see what
you can learn from it. It's a very good, common technique we use as project managers.
Gantt chart. All right. A Gantt chart is a bar chart that displays
scheduled info graphically. So you can see that right? You have what your tasks are,
you already have your timeline there and it shows you through a bar chart, what exactly
things are going to be done. And if you go to step further, you could even do dependencies,
et cetera. Now I really want to be clear. It's a great tool for monitoring your timeline to
understand dependencies or what flows into a task or out of a task. It is not a project plan.
Please do not have only a Gantt chart as your project plan. I see this too often in projects
and I'm letting you know you are missing out on a lot of other stuff that you need to be cognizant
of. You actually need a detailed project plan that has a list of tasks, et cetera. You can't do that
with Gantt. It's too overwhelming. I've seen Gantt charts which are humongous and people don't look
at them. And the whole purpose of your Gantt chart is so you can see very quickly dependencies, where
things are at, are you on track? So it is a really good tool. It is for the time portion of your
project when you want to monitor the schedule. It is not a project plan. Just please remember that.
Last but not least deliverables, and what a great way to end on this terminology.
Why? Because every project has deliverables and what are deliverables? It's the end result
of what the project created in order to give to a client, an end user, a department,
whomever you were creating your project activities for, you're now delivering it to them.
That's what a deliverable is. Now I have for you a deliverable. And that is, I told you,
if you stay to the end of this video, I was going to thank you by giving you this free, free, this
great checklist that tells you all the top 10 mistakes in projects. You're definitely going
to need this. And how can you get it? Go to the link below this YouTube video. On that note,
thank you so much for sticking around on these definitions. And I'll see you at the next video.