Project Management

Agile is a way of working in short cycles: deliver a working result, learn from the people using it and adjust the plan. Scrum and Kanban are two ways to do it.

A project is temporary work with a start and a finish that creates one unique result, such as a new website, within limits of scope, time and cost.

A program is a group of related projects managed together for benefits none of them would deliver alone, like a second branch with its premises, staff and ads.

A portfolio, in project management, is every project, program and ongoing operation a business funds for its strategy, and the line that says no to the rest.

Scope is all the work a project will deliver, and by agreement everything it will not. Written down, it shows when a request is extra work.

A milestone is a checkpoint in a schedule that takes no time: the moment a stage is done, such as design approved. A Gantt chart draws it as a diamond.

A task dependency in project management is a link where one task cannot start or finish until another does. It sets the order of work and carries delays.

RACI is a table showing, for each task, who does the work (Responsible), who owns the result (Accountable), who is asked (Consulted) and who is told (Informed).

A Gantt chart is a schedule in which each task is a horizontal bar on a time scale, so you see what runs together, what waits and when the work ends.

The critical path is the longest chain of dependent tasks in a project. It sets the finish date: a delay on it delays the project, a gain elsewhere does not.

A risk is something that has not happened yet and would affect a project for better or worse if it did. Threats are negative risks, opportunities positive ones.

An issue is a problem that is already happening and affects a project's goals. Unlike a risk, it is not a possibility: it needs an owner and action now.

Scrum is a lightweight framework in which a small team works in sprints of one month or less, meets for 15 minutes a day and shows a working result each sprint.

Kanban is a way to manage work on a board of columns with a limit on how many items can be in progress at once. New work starts only when a slot frees up.

A sprint is a fixed period, one month or less, in which a Scrum team works toward one goal and delivers a working result. The dates stay, the work can flex.

Lead time is the full time from a customer's request to delivery, waiting included. It is the wait the customer feels, not only the time spent working.

Cycle time is the time from when work on an item starts to when it is finished, waits after the start included. The queue before the start is not part of it.

YAGNI (You Aren't Gonna Need It) is the rule from Extreme Programming of not building a feature until there is a real need for it, not a guess.