This glossary covers all common project management terminology.
A - Acceptance Criteria to Authority | B - Backward Pass to Business Process Manager (BPM) | C - Change to Customer | D - Decision Tree Analysis to Duration | E - Early Finish Date to Event | F - Failure Mode and Effect Analysis to Functional organization | G - Gantt Chart to guidelines | H - Hammock task to Hyperlink | I - i-j notation to ITIL | J - Job Description to Just-In-Time | K - Kaizen to Knowledge | L - Labor, Equipment, Material to Logical Relationship | M - Manage Project Team to Monte Carlo Analysis | N - Near-Critical Activity to Node | O - Operations to Output | P - parametric to Projectized Organization | Q - Qualitative Risk Analysis to Quantitative Risk Analysis | R - Records Management to Root Cause Analysis | S - Saved Search to System | T - Target Completion Date to Triple Constraint | U - Uncontrollable Risks to User Group | V - Validation to Voice of the Customer | W to Z - War Room to Zero Float

I - i-j notation to ITIL

i-j notation

Symbols used in activity-on-arrow networks the i-node is the beginning of an activity, and the j-node is the finish.

Impact

An assessment of the adverse effect of the risk occurring. Used in risk analysis as one part of the assessment of a risk, the other being likelihood.

Impact analysis

An assessment of the impact of taking a certain course of action. For example analysis of the cost, and time impact of a implementing a change request.

Implementation phase

In the project lifecycle the implementation phase is the phase in which work is completed.

Imposed Date

A fixed date imposed on a schedule activity or schedule milestone, usually in the form of a "start no earlier than" and "finish no later than" date.

Indirect costs

Indirect cost can't be assigned directly to a project, for example back office functions that are in place as part of operating a business (accounting, billing, security, HR etc).

Initiate

The process of formally recognizing that a new project exists, which includes transition of projects from one phase to another such as Scoping to Design.

In progress

An piece of work that has started, but is not yet completed.

Input [Process Input]

Any item, whether internal or external to the project, that is required by a process before that process proceeds. May be an output from a predecessor process.

Internal Rate of Return

A method for calculating the predicted profit from an investment over a period of time.

Internal risk

A risk from within an organization for example a risk around resource availability for a project. These sorts of risks are fairly predictable so there will often be actions that can be taken to mitigate the impact of a risk or reduce the likelihood of it happening.

Issue

An existing problem. Issues are managed differently from risks because risks are problems that might happen.

Download an Issue Log - Template in Mind map, Word or PDF format

Issue Log

Issue Management

The discipline of identifying, assessing and resolving issues.

ITIL

A set of best-practice publications for IT service management. Owned by the Cabinet Office (part of HM Government), ITIL gives guidance on the provision of quality IT services and the processes, functions and other capabilities needed to support them. The ITIL framework is based on a service lifecycle and consists of five lifecycle stages (service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation and continual service improvement), each of which has its own supporting publication. There is also a set of complementary ITIL publications providing guidance specific to industry sectors, organization types, operating models and technology architectures. See www.itil-officialsite.com for more information.

See ITIL dictionary

Methodology specific dictionaries / glossaries

• View the Agile Dictionary
• Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) Dictionary
• Prince 2 glossary of terms
• Full ITIL glossary of terms
• See also Risk Management Dictionary.