5th Edition Glossary - Association for Project Management

Glossary of project management termsOrganisation design The design of themost appropriate organisation for aproject.Organisation structure The organisationalenvironment within which theproject takes place. It defines the reportingand decision-making hierarchy ofan organisation and how project managementoperates within it.Original budget The initial budgetestablished at or near the time a contractwas signed or a project authorised,based on the negotiated contract cost ormanagement’s authorisation.Original duration The duration ofactivities or groups of activities asrecorded in the baseline schedule.Other direct costs (ODC) A group ofaccounting elements that can be isolatedto specific activities, other thanlabour and material. Included in ODCare such items as travel, computer timeand services.Outcome The result of a project, theresult of a deliberation concerning partof a project or an individual issue.Out-of-sequence progress Progress thathas been reported even though activitiesthat have been deemed predecessorsin project logic have not beencompleted.Outputs Deliverables that are theresult of a process. See deliverables.Outsourcing* The contracting-out, orbuying in of facilities or work (asopposed to using in-house resources).Outturn costof a project.The expected final costOverhead Costs incurred in the operationof a business that cannot bedirectly related to the individual productsor services being produced. Seeindirect cost.Overrun Costs incurred in excess ofthe contract target costs on an incentivetype contract or of the estimated costson a fixed fee contract. An overrun isthat value of costs needed to complete aproject, over that value originallyauthorised by management.Owner The person or organisation forwhich the project is ultimately undertakenand who will own, operate andbenefit from the facility in the long term.Parallel activities Two or more activitiesthan can be done at the same time.Parametric estimating An estimatingtechnique that uses a statistical relationshipbetween historic data andother variables (for example squaremetreage in construction, lines of codein software development) to calculatean estimate.Pareto diagram A histogram orderedby frequency of occurrence that showshow many results were generated byeach identified cause.Partnering An arrangement betweentwo or more organisations to manage acontract between them cooperatively, asdistinct from a legally established partnership.See alliancing.Path* An activity or unbrokensequence of activities in a networkdiagram.Payback An investment appraisaltechnique.Percent complete A measure of thecompletion status of a partially completedactivity. It may be aggregated tosections of a project or the wholeproject.146