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PM Speak
4

PM Speak

PM Speak

4
(OP)
I saw this and thought it was funny, Project Management Speak.  I have also posted an Engineering Lexicon on this site some years ago, but don't have the search kung-fu to find it now.

Project management is a specialty, and it has its own language. Resistance is futile.

1. Scope - It's what has to be done. Always too general for some and too specific for others. Never right.
2. Resources - Funding and people authorized for the project. Never enough and always in the wrong denominations.
3. Schedule - How much time you have to get it all done. Never enough.
4. Project Manager - You. The person responsible for everything, and in control of nothing.
5. Sponsor - The one that wanted it in the first place. The one that shudders when you walk in because you always bring a problem, and give them way too many details.
6. Customer - The group that want things their way.
7. Vendor - The other group that wants things their way.
8. Users - People addicted to the old way.
9. Escalation - A process that defies gravity, and moves problems uphill.
10. Documentation - The last task in a project, or later.
11. Flowcharts - Cubicle art.
12. Team - Your best friends. The group that, when asked who caused a problem, forms a circle and each person points to the left.
13. Work Group - An oxymoron.
14. Oxymorons - People that take more than their share of oxygen from a project.
15. Project Plan - A deliverable assigned to the most annoying person on the project, who doesn't recognize his or her work is done after the project has started and is going according to plan.
16. Almost Done - Where you are after Day 1 of the project. What you say when the "80% done" answer quits working.
17. RFI - Request for Information. A request for a customized marketing document.
18. RFP - Request for Proposal. A request to take a monkey off a customer's back.
19. RFQ - Request for Qualifications. A request for a customized marketing document. A good source of boilerplate information for the RFP.
20. RFQQ - Adds a price quote to the RFQ. Generally from a vendor that has too little information from a customer that has too little understanding. Binding.
21. RFK - An important reminder that even the best project managers can find themselves in a bay of pigs.
22. Proposal - A document of sweeping generalizations.
23. Testing - What development is called after the development schedule has passed.
24. Testing - What the end-users do when the testing schedule has passed. Sometimes called Post-implementation Support.
25. Process Reengineering - Todays processes, turned sideways.
26. KPIs - Key Performance Indicators. Objective measures of failure, most often advocated by opponents. Never tracked.
27. CSFs - Critical Success Factors. An early view of the blunders you will certainly make. Always tracked, but never called CSFs.
 

RE: PM Speak

You forgot one:

Preconstruction Meeting - Group of people who will have litte or nothing to do with the actual work.    

RE: PM Speak

And Budget: Ficticious allocation of costs that are insufficient to fund the project.

RE: PM Speak

Base-Line Schedule:  A fictional work consisting of a bunch of colored lines all ending at the date that the customer says they want the project done.

Rebased-lined schedule:  A bunch of colored lines all ending at the date that the project was actually done.  Allows the customer to make the claim that "The project was completed on schedule."

Stakeholders:  A group of people who will blame you for everything that goes wrong with the product - ever, forever.

 

RE: PM Speak

I though stakeholders are the people who have stakes in their hands so when you screw up they will drive it thru your heart (our back if not carefull).

Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."  

RE: PM Speak

"Stretch Targets" - The ridiculous numbers that you have to utter before the CEO will let you out of the budget meeting.

- Steve

RE: PM Speak

Mission Creep -  not, this time, a brown-noser, but the habit of people not doing the work trying to look like they are contributing team players by moving the goal posts.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

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