Glossary – Chapter 11
After action evaluation – Postproject assessments to add to organizational learning.
Assessment – Means of monitoring project progress to identify problems
Authorization – Control technique requiring that managerial approval be given before
resoureces are expended on an activity
Benchmarking – Testing the system with a representative workload
Control – guidance, including any actions necessary, to keep project on target
Corrective action – Managerial action to redirect project effort.
Data collection process – reporting system in which progress is reported to managers
by time period.
Earned value concept – Standard accounting technique crediting progress with its
budget value
Formative evaluations – Evaluations of critical project elements
Group support systems (GSSs) – Software used to improve group communication and
decision making
High change threshold – Policy limiting changes to project scope
Incremental development – Systems development by iterative partial development
follewed by user testing to verity functionality
Milettone – Distinct event signifying completion of a block of tasks
Mission analysis – Evaluation of system components contribution with respect to
organizational needs and objectives
Performance standards – Specifications of a successful project (what the resulting
system should do to be called a success)
Planning – Setting goals and directions as well as a program to attain them
Preaward audits – Means of ensuring vendor capacity and reputation
Project deescalation – Reduction of project scope triggered by one of many possible
reasons, including managerial judgement that the project will not fit organizational
needs.
Prototyping – Means of testing the critical performance features of a system
Referencen checking – contacting existing users to verfy adequacy of system
performance
Requirements scrubbing – Elimination of unnecessary project elements
Standard time unit – Measure of work accomplished in term of the typical, competent
effort needed to perform a specific task
Technical analysis – test of the ability of the system to function in appropriate
environments
Variance analysis – Accounting cost control focusing on the differences between
planned and actual performance
Work packages – project divisions base on group of related activities