“Project Managers – can’t live with ’em, can’t lock ’em in a filing cabinet in a disused basement toilet with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.
Project Managers have a large part to play in what work you’ll have to do, when you’ll have to do it by, and whether you get paid. So it’s pretty useful to gain credibility with them – and other stakeholders you meet – by understanding their language, and even using it on occasion.
What follows is a guide to the common terms used by Project Managers and other people within a project. Like most jargon, it seems pointless until you start working with it, at which point it becomes a very useful way of describing the many people, situations and processes which almost every development project will involve.
Many of the terms have a commercial tone to them, as if the only possible application is in pursuit of cash. Leaving aside the question of ‘so what?’, it’s worth bearing in mind that a project is a project, whether money changes hands or not, and whether the end goal is profit or not. “