Project Management Definitions – Part 12

Risk category

A group of potential causes of risk.  Risk causes may be grouped into categories such as technical, external, organisational, environmental, or project management.  A category may include sub categories such as technical maturity, weather, or aggressive estimating

Risk management plan

The document describing how a project risk management will be structured and performed on the project.  It is contained in or is a subsidiary plan of the project management plan.

Information in the risk management plan varies by application area and project size.  The risk management plan is different from the risk register that contains the list of project risks, the results of risk analysis, and the risk responses

Risk mitigation

A risk response planning technique associated with threats that seek to reduce the probability of occurrence or impact of a risk to below an acceptable threshold

Risk register

The document containing the results of the qualitative risk analysis, quantitative risk analysis, and risk response planning.  The risk register details of all identified risks, including description, category, cause, probability of occurring, impact on objectives, proposed responses, owners, and current status

Risk tolerance

The degree, amount, all volume of risk that an organisation or individual will withstand

Risk transference

A risk response planning technique that’s use the impact of a threat to a third party, together with ownership of the response

Role

A defined function to be performed by a project team member, such as testing, filing, inspecting, coding

Rolling wave planning

A form of progressive elaboration planning where the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail at a low level of the work breakdown structure, while the work far in the future is planned at a relatively high level of the work breakdown structure, but the detailed planning of the work to be performed within another one or two periods in the near future is done as work is being completed during the current period.

Root cause analysis

An analytical technique used to determine the basic underlying reason the causes of variance or it defect or a risk.  Or root cause may underlie more than one variance or defect or risk

Schedule baseline

A specific version of the schedule model used to compare actual results to the plan to determine if preventative or corrective action is needed to meet the project objectives

Schedule compression

Shortening the project schedule duration without reducing the project scope

Schedule management plan

The document that establishes criteria and the activities for developing and controlling the project schedule

Schedule network analysis

The technique of identifying early and late start dates, as well as early and late finish dates, for the uncompleted portions of project schedule activities

Schedule performance index (SPI)

A measure of schedule efficiency on a project.  It is the ratio of earned value. The SPI equals earned value divided by planned value

SV (schedule variance)

The difference between the planned and actual duration of the planned and actual finish dates.  When using earned value management, schedule variance is the difference between the earned value and the planned value

Scheduled finish date (SF)

The point in time that work was scheduled to finish on a schedule activity.  The schedule to finish date is normally within the range of dates delimited by the early finish date and the late finish date.  It may reflect of resource leveling of scarce resources.  Sometimes called planned finish date

Scheduled start date (SS)

The point in time that work was scheduled to start on a schedule activity.  The scheduled start date is normally within the range of dates delimited by the early start date and the late start date.  It may reflect resource leveling of scarce resources.  Sometimes called planned start date.

Scope

The work needed to produce the deliverables, products, or outcomes of the project or outcomes for the project

Scope baseline

And approved a specific version of the detailed scope statement, work breakdown structure, and its associated work breakdown structure dictionary

Scope change

Any change to the project scope.  A scope change almost always requires an adjustment to the project cost or schedule

Scope creep

Adding features and functionality (project scope) without addressing the effects on time, costs, and resources, or without customer approval

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