Project Management Abbreviations
59 abbreviations · part of Business & Finance Abbreviations
Abbreviations from project, program and portfolio management, covering planning and scheduling methods, earned value formulas, change control, contract types, agile and Scrum roles, scaled agile frameworks and professional certifications. They appear in project plans, status reports, PMI and PRINCE2 materials and tools such as Jira and Microsoft Project. Earned value entries include the formula behind each metric so figures can be checked by hand.
| Abbreviation | Stands for | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AC | Actual cost | Total cost actually incurred for the work performed during a period, compared with earned value to assess cost efficiency. |
| ART | Agile release train | Long-lived team of agile teams, often 50 to 125 people, that plans, commits and delivers together on a shared cadence under the Scaled Agile Framework. |
| BAC | Budget at completion | Total approved budget for all the work in a project or control account, the sum of all planned value, used as the reference for forecasts. |
| CAPM | Certified Associate in Project Management | Entry-level PMI certification for students and early-career professionals, requiring 23 hours of project management education and a 150-question exam based on PMI's… |
| CCB | Change control board | Group of stakeholders formally responsible for reviewing, approving, deferring or rejecting proposed changes to a project's scope, schedule, cost or baseline… |
| CCPM | Critical chain project management | Scheduling method that accounts for resource limits and protects the project end date with aggregated time buffers instead of padding each task estimate. |
| CO | Change order | Written amendment to a construction or fixed-price contract, agreed by owner and contractor, that changes the scope of work and adjusts the contract price, schedule or… |
| CPFF | Cost-plus-fixed-fee | Cost-reimbursement contract type in which the government pays the contractor's allowable costs plus a fee fixed at the outset, which does not change with actual costs. |
| CPI | Cost performance index | Measure of cost efficiency equal to earned value divided by actual cost. |
| CPM | Critical path method | Scheduling technique that identifies the longest chain of dependent activities in a project, the critical path, which sets the shortest possible project duration. |
| CR | Change request | Formal proposal to change a project's scope, requirements, schedule, budget or deliverables, documented with its reason and impact and submitted for approval through… |
| CSM | Certified ScrumMaster | Entry-level agile certification from the Scrum Alliance for people who facilitate Scrum teams, earned by attending a live course of about 14 to 16 hours with a… |
| CV | Cost variance | Earned value minus actual cost; a negative cost variance means the completed work has cost more than budgeted. |
| DoD | Definition of Done | Shared checklist of quality criteria that a backlog item or increment must meet to count as complete in Scrum, such as code reviewed, tested, documented and deployable. |
| DoR | Definition of Ready | Checklist of conditions a backlog item should meet before a team takes it into a sprint, such as clear acceptance criteria, estimated size and resolved dependencies. |
| DSDM | Dynamic Systems Development Method | Agile project delivery framework that fixes time and cost and varies scope, using timeboxing and MoSCoW prioritization, with an emphasis on business value and governance. |
| EAC | Estimate at completion | Forecast of a project's total cost at completion based on performance so far; a common formula divides the budget at completion by the cost performance index. |
| ETC | Estimate to complete | Expected cost to finish the remaining work on a project, calculated as estimate at completion minus actual cost to date, or built bottom-up from fresh estimates. |
| EV | Earned value | Budgeted value of the work actually completed to date, calculated as the percentage of work complete multiplied by the budget for that work. |
| EVM | Earned value management | Project control method that integrates scope, schedule and cost by comparing the value of work actually completed with the work planned and the money spent, giving… |
| FF | Finish-to-finish | Dependency in which the successor activity cannot finish until the predecessor finishes, as when final inspection cannot end before the last installation work ends. |
| FFP | Firm-fixed-price | Pricing arrangement in which the contractor agrees to deliver for a set price that does not change with its actual costs, placing maximum cost risk on the contractor. |
| FS | Finish-to-start | Most common type of dependency between scheduled activities: the successor cannot start until the predecessor finishes, such as painting only after drywall is complete. |
| LOE | Level of effort | Estimate of the work needed for a task, often in hours or days; in earned value management, the term also names support activities, such as project administration, that… |
| MoSCoW | Must have, should have, could have, won't have | Prioritization technique that sorts requirements into four categories: must have (essential), should have (important but not vital), could have (desirable) and won't… |
| OBS | Organizational breakdown structure | Hierarchy of the departments, teams and people responsible for project work, which is mapped against the work breakdown structure to assign accountability for each work… |
| PERT | Program Evaluation and Review Technique | Network scheduling technique that estimates activity durations from three values, optimistic, most likely and pessimistic, to model uncertainty and the probability of… |
| PI | Program increment | Fixed timebox in the Scaled Agile Framework, typically 8 to 12 weeks, during which an agile release train plans and delivers value, beginning with a PI planning event. |
| PID | Project initiation documentation | PRINCE2 set of documents that defines a project before delivery begins, covering business case, scope, organization, plans, controls and quality, and forming the basis… |
| PM | Project management | Discipline of planning, organizing and controlling work, people and budgets to deliver a defined result, such as a building, software release or event, within agreed… |
| PMBOK | Project Management Body of Knowledge | PMI's foundational guide to project management standards and practices, formally titled "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge," used as a reference for… |
| PMI | Project Management Institute | Global professional organization for project management, which administers the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification and publishes A Guide to the Project… |
| PMO | Project management office | Central team that sets project management standards, methods, templates and tools for an organization, collects status reporting and may directly manage or oversee a… |
| PMP | Project Management Professional | Certification awarded by the Project Management Institute to project managers who meet education and experience requirements and pass a demanding exam covering people… |
| PO | Product owner | Scrum role accountable for maximizing the value of the product, mainly by creating, ordering and clarifying the product backlog and deciding what the team works on next. |
| PoC | Proof of concept | A small, often throwaway implementation built to show that an idea, technology or approach is feasible before investing in full development. |
| PPM | Project portfolio management | Centralized selection, prioritization and oversight of an organization's projects and programs so that limited money and people go to the work that best supports… |
| PRD | Product requirements document | Document describing what a product or feature should do, for whom and why, including goals, user stories, functional requirements, constraints and success metrics, used… |
| PRINCE2 | Projects in Controlled Environments | Process-based project management method, widely used in the UK, Europe and Australia, that structures projects around principles, themes and processes, with defined… |
| PSM | Professional Scrum Master | Scrum certification from Scrum.org, founded by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber, earned by passing an online assessment with no required course. |
| PV | Planned value | Authorized budget for the work scheduled to be completed by a given date, forming the cost baseline curve against which progress is measured. |
| RACI | Responsible, accountable, consulted, informed | Responsibility assignment matrix listing tasks or decisions against people or roles and marking who does the work (R), who owns the outcome (A), who gives input (C) and… |
| RAG | Red, amber, green | Traffic-light status rating used in project reports and dashboards: green means on track, amber means at risk or minor problems, and red means serious problems needing… |
| RAID | Risks, assumptions, issues, dependencies | Log used to record and track a project's risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies in one place, reviewed regularly in status meetings and governance reports. |
| ROM | Rough order of magnitude | Very early, high-level estimate of a project's cost or duration, made before detailed requirements exist, used to decide whether an idea is worth pursuing. |
| RTM | Requirements traceability matrix | Table linking each requirement to its source, design elements, test cases and status, used to confirm that every requirement is built and tested and that nothing extra… |
| SAFe | Scaled Agile Framework | A framework for applying agile practices across large organizations by coordinating many teams into "agile release trains" that plan together in regular program… |
| SF | Start-to-finish | Rarely used dependency in which the successor cannot finish until the predecessor starts, as in a shift handover where the old system runs until the new one starts. |
| SM | Scrum Master | Scrum role accountable for the team's effectiveness, coaching the team and organization in Scrum, facilitating events when needed and removing impediments. |
| SPI | Schedule performance index | Earned value divided by planned value, showing how efficiently a project is progressing against its schedule; an SPI below 1.0 means less work has been completed than… |
| SS | Start-to-start | Dependency in which the successor activity cannot start until the predecessor has started, allowing the two to run in parallel, often with a lag. |
| SV | Schedule variance | Earned value minus planned value, expressing schedule progress in money: a negative figure means less work has been completed than planned to date. |
| T&M | Time and materials | Pricing method in which the client pays fixed hourly rates for labor, including overhead and profit, plus the actual cost of materials. |
| TF | Total float | Amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the project's finish date, calculated as late start minus early start. |
| UAT | User acceptance testing | Final testing phase in which business users or clients verify that a system or product meets their requirements in realistic scenarios before it is accepted and… |
| WBS | Work breakdown structure | Hierarchical breakdown of a project's total scope into progressively smaller deliverables and work packages, used as the basis for estimating, scheduling, assigning… |
| WIP | Work in progress | Partly finished goods in a manufacturing process, recorded as inventory and valued at the materials, labor and overhead costs incurred so far. |
| WSJF | Weighted shortest job first | Prioritization model that ranks work by cost of delay divided by job size or duration, so items delivering the most value soonest come first. |
| XP | Extreme Programming | An agile software methodology emphasizing frequent releases, pair programming, test-driven development, continuous integration, simple design and close collaboration… |
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