Project Management Terminology

Current Effort:

The accumulated working hours and costs incurred to date.

Work:

The planned or amount of work to be done.

Effort:

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

Budget:

The order amount in a customer project or the approved amount of work 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 person.

Personnel Costs:

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

Material Costs:

The costs for materials, services and all other types of expenses that are not represented by the work performed.

Cost:

The sum of personnel costs and material costs.

Item:

The general term for anything that needs to be created or completed. Items include tasks, stories, problem reports, and documents.