Google Project Management Certificate · Course 3: Project Planning - Putting It All Together
This is the whole vocabulary of Course 3 as study notes for revision, so a term makes sense at a glance rather than needing the video again. It covers the planning phase end to end: the plan and the schedule, the budget and procurement, risk, and communication. Use it as a quick lookup before a quiz.
Working through the schedule in reverse, from the final task or milestone towards the start, to find the latest each task can begin and still hit the deadline. (Contrast: a forward pass runs from the first task onwards to find earliest dates.)
Baseline
The approved cost figure everything is measured against, so you can say whether spending is on track and judge success at the end. (Contrast: a re-baseline resets that figure after an approved change to scope, cost or schedule.)
Baseline a budget
The act of fixing the approved budget as a reference point, then comparing real spending against it as the project runs.
Bottom-up approach
Costing a project by listing every single item that carries a price, start to finish, and adding the lot together rather than working down from a lump sum.
Budget
The money estimated as necessary to reach the project’s goals and objectives.
Budget pre-allocation
When the money is fixed before the project even starts, usually because the company’s budgeting cycle demands numbers before scope is defined.
Budget risk
The chance that costs climb above plan, normally through weak estimating or scope that keeps growing.
Buffer
Spare time parked at the end of a task or a project to absorb slowdowns you cannot predict.
How much work the people and resources on the project can realistically finish in a given stretch of time.
Capacity planning
Assigning people and resources to tasks, then checking honestly whether you have enough of them to finish on time.
CAPEX
Capital expenses: large, long-lived purchases such as buildings, vehicles or equipment, bought because they will produce a benefit in future. (Contrast: OPEX is the recurring cost of running day to day.)
Cash flow
Money coming into the project and money going out of it. When outflow starts outpacing inflow, the budget needs adjusting.
Cause-and-effect diagram
A picture that traces the possible causes behind a risk or problem, sorted into categories. Also called a fishbone or Ishikawa diagram.
Communication
The movement of information around a project: what gets shared, how it is shared, and with whom.
Communication plan
The document that records the process, types and expectations of project communication, answering what, who, when, why, how and where it is stored.
Contingency budget
Money set aside for surprises the cost estimate never covered.
Contingency reserves
Funds added to the estimated cost to handle risks you have already identified and written down, sized by working through the risk process. (Contrast: management reserves cover the risks nobody identified, and are set as a percentage rather than estimated.)
Cost of quality
What you spend to stop things going wrong with a product, process or task: prevention, appraisal, and the cost of internal and external failures.
Cost performance index (CPI)
A ratio comparing how much of the work is complete against what has actually been spent, used to judge cost efficiency.
Cost variance (CV)
The gap between what you expected to spend on the work completed and what you really spent at a given moment. (Contrast: schedule variance measures a gap in work done, not in money.)
Critical path
The milestones that must be reached for the project to finish on schedule, plus the mandatory tasks feeding each one. It is the longest route through the network and therefore the shortest time the project can take. (Contrast: anything carrying float sits off the critical path.)
A branching flowchart that shows how one choice ripples out into the rest of the project.
Dependency
A link between two tasks where one cannot start or finish until the other starts or finishes.
Dependency graph
A drawing of those links, showing how work actually flows and where delay risk concentrates.
Direct costs
Money spent on things the project needs in order to exist: wages, materials, equipment hire, software licences, project travel, training. (Contrast: indirect costs keep the team running but cannot be traced to the project.)
In critical path work, the soonest a task, or the project itself, can possibly begin.
Earned value management (EVM)
A technique for measuring real budget and schedule performance against the plan at regular intervals. CPI, SPI, CV and SV all come out of it.
Effort estimation
A prediction of how much active work a task takes, meaning the hours somebody is genuinely working on it. (Contrast: time estimation counts the whole elapsed duration including idle time - painting a wall is 30 minutes of effort but 24 hours of duration while it dries.)
Empathy
Being able to understand and relate to what other people are thinking and feeling. One of the soft skills that gets you honest estimates.
Ethical trap
A situation that pressures you into a decision that quietly sets your ethical principles aside.
A dependency in which the first task must be finished before the second task can be finished. Uncommon in practice.
Finish-to-start (FS)
A dependency in which the first task must be finished before the second can start. The most common type.
Fishbone diagram
Another name for the cause-and-effect diagram, so called because the layout resembles a fish skeleton.
Fixed contract
A vendor agreement paid out as agreed milestones are reached. (Contrast: a time and materials contract bills monthly for hours worked.)
Fixed costs
Costs that do not change across the life of the project, such as a one-off fee to post a job advert.
Fixed start date
The date a task has to start on if the goal is still going to be met.
Float
How long you can delay starting a task before it hits the schedule and threatens the outcome. Tasks on the critical path have zero float. Also called slack.
Forecast
A cost prediction covering a period of time, revisited and revised as the project moves.
Forward pass
Working from the first task forwards through the schedule to the end, to find earliest start dates and the total length. (Contrast: the backward pass starts at the deadline and works back to see what is genuinely critical.)
How much damage a risk would do if it happened, rated high, medium or low. (Contrast: probability is how likely it is; combine the two and you get inherent risk.)
Indirect costs
Overheads that cannot be tied to the project itself but are needed for people to work at all: admin, utilities, insurance, general office equipment, security. (Contrast: direct costs go straight into the deliverable.)
Inherent risk
The rating you get by combining a risk’s probability with its impact, which is what makes one risk comparable with another. (Contrast: it is a score, not a category of risk; medium and high scores earn a written mitigation plan.)
Issue
A problem that is real and already happening, blocking your ability to finish a task. (Contrast: a risk is only potential, and a risk that occurs turns into an issue.)
A slice of the budget, typically five to ten percent, held for risks nobody identified; spending it usually needs sponsor approval. (Contrast: contingency reserves are a calculated amount for risks already on your list.)
Medium-level risk
A risk likely enough to hit the project that it counts as urgent and has to be raised with stakeholders directly.
Milestone
A significant marker in the schedule that shows progress, usually the completion of a deliverable or a phase. (Contrast: a task is work somebody performs, while a milestone is a point that gets reached and takes no time itself.)
A question that cannot be closed off with a yes or a no, which is what gets a usable estimate out of a teammate.
OPEX
Operating expenses: the short-term, often recurring cost of running day to day, such as wages, rent and utilities. (Contrast: CAPEX buys long-lived assets the company keeps.)
Optimism bias
Believing that bad things are less likely to happen to you than to other people. It is the engine behind the planning fallacy.
Tasks that can run at the same time as others, which is where schedule savings come from. (Contrast: sequential tasks have to wait their turn.)
Personally identifiable information (PII)
Any detail that on its own could identify, contact or precisely locate a person: full name, email address, postal address, phone number, exact location, username.
Planning fallacy
The habit of underestimating how long a task will take, and what it will cost and risk along the way. Named by Kahneman and Tversky in 1977.
Planning phase
Life cycle phase two, where the intent agreed at initiation is turned into a schedule, a budget and a plan for the risks.
Probability
How likely a risk is to occur.
Probability and impact matrix
A grid that scores each risk on likelihood and damage so you can decide which ones actually deserve attention.
Procurement
Getting hold of the materials, services and supplies the project needs from outside the team.
Project budget
The money estimated as necessary to achieve the project’s goals, broken down by milestone with the tasks and their costs underneath.
Project buffer
Spare time added at the very end of the schedule, usually two or three days, drawn on whenever the project drifts. (Contrast: a task buffer protects one specific task.)
Project kick-off meeting
The first meeting of the project team, where everyone lines up on the shared vision, the goals, the scope and who is responsible for what.
Project management baseline (PMB)
The agreed fixed starting point covering scope, budget and schedule together, against which the whole project is measured.
Project plan
The single document the project is run from. It pulls together five things: the tasks, the milestones, the people, the documentation and the time.
Project task
A piece of work that has to be completed within a set period of time.
Building a separate revised budget that reflects how spending is really tracking, rather than how you originally guessed.
Request for proposal (RFP)
The document that lays out the project’s details and requirements and goes out to vendors so they can bid. (Contrast: the statement of work goes only to the vendor you chose, and the RFP is fixed while the SoW evolves.)
Reserve analysis
Checking what project resources are left and deciding whether buffer funds are needed to cover the risks on your list.
Resource cost rate
What a given resource costs: a person’s labour, a tool, a machine, a material, a licence.
Risk
Something that might happen and would affect the project if it did. (Contrast: an issue is already happening, and a risk that lands becomes one.)
Risk appetite
How much of a risk’s possible fallout an organisation is willing to live with. You, the team and the stakeholders may each draw the line in a different place.
Risk assessment
The stage where a risk’s qualities are estimated or measured, in practice its probability and its impact.
Risk management
The ongoing work of identifying and evaluating the risks and issues that could affect the project.
Risk management plan
The standing record of what could go wrong: each risk, how likely and how damaging it looks, and what you intend to do about it. Kept current rather than written once.
Risk register
The table or chart where the risks themselves are listed, alongside their ratings and mitigations.
Root cause
The original cause that set a situation in motion, as opposed to the symptoms further down the chain. Not every cause you list is the root one.
The project timeline: start date, end date, and the dated events in between.
Schedule performance index (SPI)
A ratio comparing the work actually completed against the work the plan said would be completed by now.
Schedule variance (SV)
The gap between how much work should have been finished at a given point and how much really was. (Contrast: cost variance measures the money gap.)
Scope risk
The chance that the project fails to deliver the results its goals promised.
Sequential tasks
Tasks that have to happen in a specific order, one after the next. (Contrast: parallel tasks overlap.)
Single point of failure
A risk with the power to halt work across the whole project until it is resolved, such as the shared database going down or having only one expert on a critical system.
Slack
The margin a task has before it starts pushing the finish date. Tasks on the critical path have none; everything else has some. Also called float.
Soft skills
The personal qualities that let you work well with others, above all asking open questions, negotiating and practising empathy.
Sole-supplier sourcing
Restricting a bid to one supplier so nobody else can compete. It needs a genuine justification, or it becomes an ethical problem.
Start-to-finish (SF)
A dependency where the follower cannot be closed out until the predecessor has started. Rare in practice, and the least intuitive of the four types.
Start-to-start (SS)
A dependency in which the second task cannot begin until the first one begins, so the two then run alongside each other.
Statement of work (SoW)
The document spelling out exactly what products and services a chosen vendor will provide. Unlike the NDA and the RFP, it keeps evolving as the project changes.
Subject matter expert (SME)
Someone whose depth in one narrow area, a process, a machine, a regulation, makes them the person you ask before committing to an estimate.
Subtasks
The smaller pieces of work that a larger task actually breaks down into. Listing them is the fastest way to catch an underestimate.
Summary task
The heading sitting above a group of subtasks in a project plan, describing the collection as a whole.
Spare time added to one specific task, best saved for work outside the team’s control such as a vendor delivery. (Contrast: the project buffer sits at the end of the whole schedule.)
Time and materials contract
A vendor agreement billed monthly on hours worked plus related costs such as travel and meals. (Contrast: a fixed contract pays out at milestones.)
Time estimation
A prediction of the total elapsed time a task needs from start to finish, idle time included. (Contrast: effort estimation counts only the hours of active work.)
Time risk
The chance that tasks run longer than anticipated, which drains the budget as well as the schedule.
Time-phase a budget
Spreading budget items across the project timeline so planned and actual spending can be compared period by period.
Total cost of ownership (TCO)
Everything an item or project costs across its whole life, not just the purchase price. Like a car: the price plus licence, registration, servicing and upgrades.
Planning 2 - Building the Project Plan - time against effort, buffers, the planning fallacy, capacity, float, critical path, Gantt charts, Kanban boards.
Planning 3 - Budget and Procurement - direct and indirect costs, reserves, CAPEX and OPEX, baselines, cash flow, vendors, NDA, RFP, SoW, ethical traps.
Planning 4 - Managing Risks - risk against issue, fishbone diagrams, the probability and impact matrix, inherent risk, dependencies, the four mitigation strategies.