Glossary
- Contract Funds Status Report(CFSR)
A DoD contract deliverable that reports funding status, termination liability, and projected funding needs for a contract. - Cost Performance Measurement
Provides a standard methodology for monitoring and analyzing project performance. These techniques provide a proven discipline that enables an objective review of performance across projects, organizations or portfolios. - Cost Performance Report(CPR)
A DoD contract deliverable (also used routinely by NASA and occasionally by other agencies) that reports earned value, staffing, baseline and variance analysis information in five formats. - Cost Schedule Control Systems Criteria(CSCSC or CS2)
The predecessor to Earned Value Management. - Cost Schedule Integration
The time-phased relationship between a project's activities and the cost of their associated resources, expressed as Budgeted Cost for Work Scheduled or planned value. - Cost Schedule Status Report(CSSR)
A DoD contract deliverable (also used routinely by NASA and occasionally by other agencies) that reports earned value and variance analysis information. It is similar to the CPR but used for smaller projects. - Cost/Schedule Integration
The time-phased relationship between a project's activities and the cost of their associated resources. - Critical Path
The series of interrelated tasks that comprises the longest duration to complete a project, where a delay in any task will extend the overall schedule. - Critical Path Method Scheduling(CPM)
A project management scheduling technique that incorporates activities, durations, and logical interdependencies to establish an order of execution that defines a project timeline. - Digital Dashboard (for earned value)
An electronic display providing quick intuitive access to project performance information. Examples of earned value performance information include cost and schedule variances, plan vs. actual, and estimates at completion. - Digital Dashboard (for project management)
An electronic display providing quick intuitive access to project information. Typical performance information relates to project scheduling, resourcing, and costing. - Earned Value(EV)
Sometimes used as shorthand for EVM, EV in its narrowest definition is a measurement of the work performed to date on a task in relation to its planned value. - Earned Value Analysis(EVA)
UK term for Earned Value Management. - Earned Value Cost Risk Management
To identify and assess the probability of occurrence and the resulting consequences of events that may affect the cost to complete of a project based on its historical earned value trends. - Earned Value Management(EVM)
A management technique that integrates work scope, schedule, and cost goals and objectively measures progress toward those goals. - Earned Value Management System Guidelines(ANSI/EIA 748-A)
An American National Standards Institute discretionary standard issued by the Electronic Industries Association. It defines 32 guidelines for effective earned value management systems. EIA-748-A has been adopted by Canada and is cited in US government regulations as a management requirement for contractors and government agencies. - Earned Value Measurement
An objective measurement of how much work has been accomplished on a task, expressed as Budgeted Cost for Work Performed or earned value. - Enterprise Earned Value
The disciplined and consistent application of earned value project management throughout an enterprise, facilitating use of common management techniques and comparison of performance across projects, organizations or portfolios. - Enterprise Project Management(EPM)
Enterprise Project Management (EPM): How An Organization Collects Data, Processes Information And Provides Stakeholder Views On Scheduling, Resourcing, Costing, Financial Performance And Technical Accomplishment Parameters; Data Elements Can Be Rolled Up To Reflect The Enterprise Or Sub-organizational Summaries On:
- Resource Utilization
- Cost Efficiency
- Financial Performance
- Organizational Goal Affiliation
- Satisfaction Of Success Parameters - Integrated Baseline Review(IBR)
A planning process originated by DoD to assure that project execution is based on mutual understanding by customer and supplier of work scope, schedule, resource planning and risk. An IBR typically is conducted within the first six months of a project. - Integrated Master Plan/Integrated Master Schedule(IMP/IMS)
An IMP is an event-driven plan that documents the significant accomplishments necessary to complete the work and ties each accomplishment to a key program event. An IMS is an integrated networked schedule (CPM) of program tasks required to complete the work effort captured in a related IMP. The IMS should include all IMP events and accomplishments and support each accomplishment closure criterion. IMP/IMS originated in DoD contracting. - Integrated Product Team(IPT)
An organizational concept that seeks to achieve improved project management performance and product quality by forming teams comprised of people from multiple disciplines. - Integrated Project Management(IPM)
Integrated Project Management represents the fusion of scheduling, resourcing, costing, earned value, accounting, performance measurement, and risk attributes of a project. - NASA Form 533 Reports(NASA 533)
A contract deliverable used to report financial status on NASA contracts. - OMB Circular A-11 Part 7(A-11)
The Office of Management and Budget circular that, with its companion Capital Programming Guide, establishes policy for capital acquisitions to meet the requirements of legislation including the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993; the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994, Title V; and the Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996 (Clinger-Cohen). - OMB Exhibit 300 Business Case(Exhibit 300)
A document submitted by government agencies to the Office of Management and Budget in support of their budgets for capital acquisition programs (including IT). The Exhibit 300 must show how the acquisition program supports the agency's mission and objectives and in turn how the program is supported by a sound business case based on earned value management. The governing document is OMB Circular A-11 Part 7. - Organizational Breakdown Structure(OBS)
A generic term for the system used to organize the functions of businesses and government organizations. Examples include hierarchical or flat organizations, teams, and traditional functions such as engineering, manufacturing and quality assurance. - Performance Measurement
A generic term related to the various methodologies for assessing the cost, schedule, and technical attributes of a project. - Project Accounting (for earned value)
The relationship of costs and quantities from the accounting system of record to a project's activities, expressed as Actual Cost of Work Performed or Actual Costs. - Project Accounting (for project management)
The ability to integrate actual costs and quantities from the accounting job cost system with the activities of a project. - Project Costing
The ability to estimate the influences of the project schedule, resources, and risk items on cost. - Project Management(PM)
The disciplined process of managing a project from inception to completion. - Project Planning
Developing the basis for managing the project, including the planning objectives, procedure, organization, routines, finance and chain of activities. - Project Portfolio Management(PPM)
The systemic ability of an organization to monitor projects through their throughput capacity, investment requirements, operating expenses, and their revenue contribution in satisfying organizational goals and objectives - Project Scheduling
Project scheduling is the discipline of organizing and time-phasing the activities required to complete the objectives of an effort. - Project Tracking
The process of deriving project performance by comparing baseline resource loaded schedules and budgets to actuals. - Resource Availability
Analyzing a project's demand for a resource relative to the availability of the resource across the organization. - Resource Management
The planning, allocating and scheduling of resources to tasks, generally including manpower, machine (plant and equipment), money and materials. The ability to identify and manage resource constraints associated to a product, project, or service. - Resource Planning
The ability to assign time-phased resources to tasks within a project schedule. - Risk Assessment
To identify and assess the probability of occurrence and the resulting consequences of events that may affect the cost, schedule, and technical attributes of a project. - Risk Management
The overall process of managing risk through identification, analysis, and mitigation. - Scheduling
See Project Scheduling - Scheduling Analysis
The process of reviewing a project schedule to determine status, identifying impacts to key events, determining the probability of completing the effort on time and establishing workaround plans. - Technical Performance Measurement(TPM)
Technical Performance Measurement techniques monitor specifications or the number of units completed for a given task. It allows management to see how specifications, or unit values, evolve over “time”. Measurements are always recorded in technical format and are typically associated to physical units of measurement such as speed, weight, size, power, number of units completed or some other technical attribute. - Work Breakdown Structure(WBS)
A product-oriented family tree that organizes the elements of a project to one another, providing a basis for cost estimating, configuration management, specification management, risk management and performance management. A WBS may be hierarchical or relational. (Follow the link below to Japan's definition of WBS.)