Glossary of terms

■ 80-hour rule A rough guideline about the normal scale of activities in a work
breakdown structure: no single activity should require more than 80 hours (or
two weeks) of work
■ Activities A collection of related tasks that contribute to a single deliverable.
■ Agile CA system or software development method.

■ Benefits realization A method of evaluating project success according

to whether the intended benefits (financial or other) are achieved, often some
time after the project itself is completed. Used most frequently in information
systems projects.
■ Best practice A method or technique that has consistently
shown results superior to those achieved with other means and
that may be used as a benchmark.
■ Budget A financial document that forecasts or plans the
expected dollar inflows (revenue) and dollar outflows
(expenses) for a project.
■ Business case A document that describes an intended service
or ‘business’ in operational and financial terms, and seeks to
establish that the service as planned can be financially viable
(or profit­able)—a positive business case is one in which the
revenue/benefits outweigh the costs.
■ Buy-in The level of support among any group of stakeholders
(often staff and management) for the project and/or the
proposed changes.
■ Cash flow The movement of money into and out of a
business, project or financial entity during a specified period of
time.
■ Close/close-out The fourth phase of the project cycle, when the
process of handover, or transitioning from the project to the new
method or state, is completed.
■ Commissioning This term has two meanings:
■ The process of ensuring that a new facility, piece of
equipment or service is fully operational.
■ The process of engaging a team, company or consultant
to conduct a project, service or other activity on behalf of
the funding agency.
■ Contingency A potential problem or change in the
project; an amount of money or other resource held
within the project to cover elements of risk or uncertainty.
■ Control Ensuring that the project keeps to the agreed
project scope, budget, schedule and quality.
■ Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) Estimates (in monetary
terms) the costs and benefits (or measure of effect) of an
intervention or program.
■ Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) Compares relative
cost and outcomes (or effect) of two or more
interventions with the effect expressed in non­monetary
terms using ‘natural units’ such as cure ate or reduction in
the incidence of a disease.
 The project life cycle
■ Project life cycle A framework of the phases that a project
must move through in order to progress from ‘a good idea’ to
completion.
■ The project life cycle—initiate, plan, implement and close—
is a model that explains the normal progression of projects to
completion
■ Its use assists project teams to plan and monitor progress.
■ Thus, the project life cycle is often used to refocus and
reframe activities, and project management then includes a
reflective learning process.
■ The first phase of the cycle, initiate, involves the identification of a
problem or opportunity and some initial concept development and
scoping.
■ This is the ‘good idea’ stage. It is common for organizations to have a
process for documenting and sifting these good ideas before any more
detailed work is done.
■ Those that pass this test enter the second phase, plan.
■ This involves exploration and analysis focused initially on clarifying the
goals; then on defining the scope (how big is it?);
■ Finally on preparing a plan for how and when and by whom the project
will be done, what resources are required and how success will be judged.