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Hello, I'm Jennifer Wit, director of Project Manager.com.
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Well, welcome to our whiteboard session today on terms that project managers use. Today, I'm going to talk about my top 10, and hopefully, they'll be helpful. I want to point you to a resource that I think is very helpful. Um, this is the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge by PMI, the Project Management Institute. There are other resources out there. You can certainly Google some of these terms too, but it's important coming into project management, whether you're new to project management coming in, or maybe you're on and off as the project manager, but there are several terms that project managers use. Again, this is not the end-all, be-all. These are just some common terms that sometimes get twisted and misused sometimes, so I want to clarify some of these.
So the first one is, you may hear WBS. When I came on board as a project manager, I thought, what in the world is that? A WBS? And some people called them the wibbit. I'm like, what's a wibbit or a WBS? So it's actually a Work Breakdown Structure. So a Work Breakdown Structure is, it's hierarchical, and it breaks down the work, and it's deliverables-oriented, and it really defines the scope of the project. So the Work Breakdown Structure keeps breaking different components down to show all the work again that produces deliverables, and in essence, is the total scope of the project.
Number two is a milestone. So you hear different milestones. You hear different points, uh, on the schedule. So this is a significant point in time or event that's on your schedule. Sometimes you'll see them marked as like a black diamond, and again, that indicates a milestone on your project. Sometimes, uh, a good best practice for project managers is, once you hit a milestone on time, that's a great cause for celebration. I always use those to celebrate something significant being done.
Number three is a baseline. So this, to me, is where a project can become a failed project or successful project because in the beginning of the project, it's important to, once the plan is, uh, approved by the Change Control Board, is to baseline it. So you're, in essence, approving the plan, the project plan, which also includes the project schedule. And so what happens is, during the project, of course, changes are always going to occur, changes to the time, time, the scope, the budget, and the quality. So as long as you take those changes to a CCB, which we'll talk about later, to get approved, then they're giving you approval to rebaseline the project, and that's approval to make changes. So if your schedule is elongated, uh, maybe it's delayed for some time, if you get the appropriate approval and rebaseline, to me, that again is the difference between a failed or successful project. So very important.
The other is a triple constraint. So the little twist about a triple constraint is there are four components of the triple constraint. It's usually indicated by a triangle. So there, it's, it's balancing the time, the cost, the scope, and the quality of your project. So with the triple constraint, as these things occur, specifically around changes, so the, uh, time, if you increase the time, it might, it might and will, um, impact at least one of these other components. So it's always, um, managing these things so you keep your project on track. And these things are the things that you look at when you take things to the CCB, your Change Control Board.
Number five is a project life cycle. So there are many different types of project life cycles. This is a single-phase life cycle. This is the one indicated by PMI, the Project Management Institute. Again, it's a single phase, and so they're initiating processes that are, that occur that feed the planning processes, and at the same time. So once your project begins executing, the executing processes, monitoring and controlling processes begin to occur throughout the project, and then once the project is completed, you hit your closing processes. So that is a project life cycle: initiating, planning, monitoring and controlling, executing, and closing the project.
Number six is a Gantt chart. So a Gantt chart is a tool. It's a graphical display of the schedule information. So if you look at your Work Breakdown Structure in your, in your, uh, tool that you use, you can look at your Work Breakdown Structure. It includes dates and durations for tasks, um, to be completed or deliverables to be produced.
And then the CCB. So when I came on board as a project manager, I kept hearing about a CCB. I thought, what is a CCB? So it stands for the Change Control Board. So the Change Control Board board is a group of stakeholders. So it's not all of the stakeholders. It's representative from the stakeholder groups, and they are on your board. They're the people who, um, are designated in your project plan, who are the people with the authority to make approval, um, or denials for things. So they review changes, they review changes, they evaluate them, they approve them, they delay them, or reject changes on your project. So these are the people with the authority. What I love about this is it takes the pressure off of project managers. I see, um, many times where project managers try to take upon themselves to make these decisions, and it's not for the project manager to make. It's for the project manager to have the processes in place, get the change, uh, processes in place for the changes to be fed to the Change Control Board, and really facilitate that process. And again, it's the, it's the CCB's, um, responsibility for making those decisions.
And then the stakeholders. Again, so who is a stakeholder? So the stakeholders include, um, people or organizations. It could be your customers, it could be your clients, it could be your vendor partners, it could be different organizations, and they're actively involved. So it's important that they're actively involved, and they, they interact and may be positive or negatively affected by the execution of the project. So they have a vested interest. So these people who are, um, deemed the stakeholders, again, they're engaged in something that's being done on the project, is usually to assist them with something that they need, and they certainly, uh, don't want any negative impacts.
The other one is the change management. So many times, there is confusion on managing change and change management. They sound, they sound similar, but change management is about, uh, it's a project management plan. So it includes the processes on who does what, when, and where, uh, related to the changes on the projects, and this project management plan is to control the scope. Versus managing change is typically associated with managing change of a project. So a project is initiated or executed, and it's going to infiltrate different organizations or groups of the corporation, and that change is going to have some trigger emotional behaviors of the company. So there are many organizations that focus on managing the change. They come in and help, uh, the organizations do the communications, the planning for the people, so that it doesn't cause mass chaos when that project is implemented.
Risk mitigation versus risk management. So again, like risk management is the plan. So risk mitigation is important because it's different than risk identification. It's important to identify risk, and people on the project sometimes are really good about identifying risk, specifically at the beginning of the project, but it's important to identify those all along the way. But more importantly is not just identifying the risk, but coming up with a mitigation strategy. So the risk mitigation is about building a risk response. It's a risk response planning technique associated with threats to the project. So if these risks that are identified occur, you need to know like what happens next. So if you just identify them and then those threats do occur on the project, then then you're like, oh no, if you don't have the mitigation strategy and this occurs, then it just takes up time. It can cause a failed project by taking too much time, or you're not prepared. Maybe you need specific, uh, resources, maybe you need specific equipment or something that is not easy to access. So to have that in place to know how to do that. But the idea is to reduce the probability of that risk occurring or reducing the impact if it does occur.
So to me, these are some of the top 10 to know and know the differences between and help you in your project. Coming on board as a project manager, if you need a tool to help you manage these items effectively on your project so you can begin to use these terms appropriately, then sign up for our software now at Project Manager.com.