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.
