Google Project Management Certificate · Course 6: Applying Project Management in the Real World
This is the whole vocabulary of Course 6, the capstone, collected as study notes for revision and grouped alphabetically so a term is quick to find. It is meant for the few minutes before a quiz, or for the moment a term turns up in one of the Sauce and Spoon activities and I want the short version without going back through the videos.
Judging how well something did by measuring it against an agreed standard or a comparable case.
Benefits
What the organisation expects to gain from the project. (benefits are the expected upside; costs are what is spent to get there, and a business case weighs the two)
Beta distribution (PERT)
A three-point estimating formula that gives the most likely estimate extra weight, on the reasoning that it is the outcome most likely to happen. (weights the middle value heavily; triangular treats all three equally)
Budget
The amount of money set aside to get the project finished.
A short-lived alliance between people or groups formed to pursue a shared aim or run a joint activity together.
Confidence level rating
A stated measure of how much trust you place in an estimate being accurate, useful for flagging the shaky numbers in a plan.
Conger’s four steps
Jay A. Conger’s sequence for persuading someone to take a new idea seriously: earn credibility, frame the idea around shared ground, back it with evidence, and connect with the person emotionally.
Constructive criticism
Feedback given respectfully and with the aim of making the work better, not of scoring a point.
Costs
Everything the project consumes, from money spent on tasks to the value of the time, labour and resources it uses up. (costs are the outlay; benefits are the expected return)
How much working time a task itself will actually take. (effort is the hands-on time; a total duration estimate adds everything else around it)
Empathy
Being able to grasp and share what another person is feeling.
Evaluation
Watching a project, measuring what it produced, and comparing that against criteria everyone agreed on beforehand.
Evaluation indicator
The precise piece of data you will collect in order to answer an evaluation question. (the question is what you want to know; the indicator is the measurement that answers it)
Evaluation presentation
A presentation that reports how the project is performing when measured against a set of standards.
Evaluation question
A central question about a project’s outcomes, impact or effectiveness that the evaluation is designed to answer. (broad and about the project; indicators are the specific data points chosen to answer it)
Executive summary
A short opening block, a few sentences up to a paragraph, that gives a busy reader the purpose and the outcome of a longer report.
A short deck or slideshow that shows senior stakeholders the value the project delivered. (the impact report sells the outcome upward to executives; the closeout report is written by a project manager for project managers)
Influence
How much power a stakeholder holds, and how far their actions can move the project’s outcome. (power is what they can do to the project; interest is how much the project affects them)
Interest
How much a stakeholder’s own needs are touched by how the project runs and how it ends. (interest is the stake they hold; influence or power is the leverage they have)
Watching, controlling or reminding your team about their assigned work so closely that it gets in the way of them doing it.
Milestones
Significant checkpoints in the schedule that show how far the project has got. (a milestone marks a point in time and takes no effort itself; tasks are the work that gets you to it)
Most likely estimate
The time a task normally takes, assuming the usual minor problems crop up but nothing extraordinary. (the middle of the three-point estimates)
Multiple choice question
A closed question that offers a fixed set of answers to pick from. (a short fixed list; a scaled question asks for a rating along a range, and an open-ended one asks for the respondent’s own words)
Mutual benefit
A situation in which every party involved comes away with some gain or advantage.
Mutually beneficial agreement
A deal struck so that everyone signing it gains something, which is the aim of a good negotiation.
Neutral reference points for settling a disagreement, such as market prices, research results, documented precedent, or law and regulation.
Objectives and key results (OKRs)
A goal paired with the metrics that will show whether it was reached, so ambition and measurement sit in the same statement.
One-pager
A single page giving stakeholders a quick overview of the project.
Open-ended question
A question that cannot be answered in a word, inviting the respondent to reply in their own language. (free text; multiple choice and scaled questions are both closed)
Optimistic estimate
The best-case time for a task, assuming nothing goes wrong. (the shortest of the three-point estimates)
Out-of-scope
Work deliberately left out of the project plan because it does not serve the project goal. (out-of-scope work is agreed as excluded; in-scope work is what the plan commits to deliver, and blurring the line is how scope creep starts)
Overhead
Running costs of the business that cannot be tied directly to making the product or delivering the service.
The worst-case time for a task, assuming the problems really do happen. (the longest of the three-point estimates)
Power-interest grid
A chart that sorts stakeholders by how much power they hold and how much interest they have, so you can see who to prioritise and how to approach each one in a negotiation.
Project charter
The formal document that defines the project and records the detail needed to reach its goals, signed off before the work starts.
Project closeout report
The wrap-up document a project manager writes for other project managers, future project managers, and anyone who wants to understand the project and find its artifacts. (peer to peer and detailed; the impact report is a short pitch of value to senior stakeholders)
Project goals
The results the project is set up to achieve.
Project plan
The documentation that pins down scope, tasks, milestones, budget and the rest of the activity, so the project can be kept on track.
Project summary
A brief overview of the project that states what it was trying to achieve.
Project tasks
The individual pieces of work that have to be completed inside a set timeframe. (tasks are the effort; milestones are the markers they add up to)
Project vision
The part of an executive summary that names the need the project exists to meet.
The review process that checks whether the project is on course to deliver a high-quality product or service, shortened to QA. (QA is preventive and looks at the process; QC inspects the output once a problem shows up)
Quality control
The techniques used to hold quality standards once an issue has been spotted, shortened to QC. (QC reacts to defects in the output; QA works on the process that produces them)
Quality management plan
The document that captures everything needed to manage quality across the project life cycle: the policies, the processes, the criteria, and who is responsible for each.
Quality planning
The process a project manager or team follows to work out which standards of quality actually matter for the project and how they will be met. (planning is the activity of deciding; standards are the specific bar that comes out of it)
Quality standards
The requirements and specifications a product or service has to hit before the organisation and the customer will call it a success. (the bar itself; quality planning is the process of setting and satisfying it)
A closed question with more than two options that asks the respondent to rate their answer along a scale. (a rating along a range; multiple choice offers discrete options, open-ended asks for free text)
Scope
Where the project starts and stops. (what falls inside is in-scope; anything else is out-of-scope)
Slide-based presentation
A run of digital slides used to put information across visually.
SMART action item
A single task made specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. (a task-level commitment; SMART goals apply the same test to the project’s goals)
SMART goals
Project goals written to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. (goal-level; a SMART action item is one task written the same way)
Stakeholder analysis
A visual mapping of everyone with a stake in the project, used to see the whole field at once.
Stakeholder management
The ongoing work of keeping good relationships with the people whose influence most affects your work.
Storytelling
Turning raw facts into a narrative so an audience takes the point and remembers it.
Summary sheet
A one or two page write-up carrying only the most relevant information, like a snapshot of the findings.
Survey
An instrument for evaluating and measuring the quality of a project’s process, goal or deliverable by asking people.
Survey question
A question written to gather the data that will answer an evaluation question.
Synthesizing
Pulling information from several sources together and using the combined picture to build an analysis.
A technique for arriving at a realistic time estimate by combining an optimistic, a most likely and a pessimistic figure. (the three inputs; triangular and beta or PERT are the two formulas for combining them)
Time estimation
A forecast of how much time a task will need in total.
Total duration estimate
The effort estimate plus everything wrapped around it, such as approvals, preparation and testing. (the calendar reality; the effort estimate counts only hands-on working time)
Triangular distribution
A three-point estimating formula that weights all three estimates equally, so the most likely case pulls no harder on the result than the optimistic or pessimistic one. (equal weights; beta or PERT leans on the most likely value)