Project management terminology

Current effort:

The working time accrued to date together with the accrued material costs.

Work:

The planned amount of working time or the amount still to be performed.

Effort:

The totality of work and material costs. Since work is measured in time and material costs in money, the two components cannot be represented in a single figure.

Budget:

The order value in a customer project or the approved amount of working time and material costs. If the current effort exceeds the budget, the project is not profitable.

Duration:

The number of working days from start to completion. A working day is calculated using the number of hours of the responsible.

Personnel costs:

The work multiplied by the hourly wage. This is derived either from the hourly rate of the assigned resource or from a system-wide average.

Material costs:

The expenses for materials, services and all other kinds of expenditure that are not reflected by the work performed.

Costs:

The sum of personnel costs and material costs.

Item:

The general term for everything that has to be created or completed. Items are, for example, tasks, stories, problem reports and documents.