Project management is the process of supervising the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.
Risk management is the identification, evaluation, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the realization of opportunities.
In management accounting or managerial accounting, managers use accounting information in decision-making and to assist in the management and performance of their control functions.
A project is a type of assignment, typically involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a specific objective.
A business case captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task. Many projects, but not all, are initiated by using a business case. It is often presented in a well-structured written document, but may also come in the form of a short verbal agreement or presentation. The logic of the business case is that, whenever resources such as money or effort are consumed, they should be in support of a specific business need. An example could be that a software upgrade might improve system performance, but the "business case" is that better performance would improve customer satisfaction, require less task processing time, or reduce system maintenance costs. A compelling business case adequately captures both the quantifiable and non-quantifiable characteristics of a proposed project. According to the Project Management Institute, a business case is a "value proposition for a proposed project that may include financial and nonfinancial benefit."
Financial risk management is the practice of protecting economic value in a firm by managing exposure to financial risk - principally operational risk, credit risk and market risk, with more specific variants as listed aside. As for risk management more generally, financial risk management requires identifying the sources of risk, measuring these, and crafting plans to mitigate them. See Finance § Risk management for an overview.
Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a business management strategy originally pioneered in the early 1990s, focusing on the analysis and design of workflows and business processes within an organization. BPR aims to help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors.
Business analysis is a professional discipline focused on identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems. Solutions may include a software-systems development component, process improvements, or organizational changes, and may involve extensive analysis, strategic planning and policy development. A person dedicated to carrying out these tasks within an organization is called a business analyst or BA.
Project portfolio management (PPM) is the centralized management of the processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. The objectives of PPM are to determine the optimal resource mix for delivery and to schedule activities to best achieve an organization’s operational and financial goals, while honouring constraints imposed by customers, strategic objectives, or external real-world factors. Standards for Portfolio Management include Project Management Institute's framework for project portfolio management, Management of Portfolios by Office of Government Commerce and the PfM² Portfolio Management Methodology by the PM² Foundation.
A project management office is a group or department within a business, government agency, or enterprise that defines and maintains standards for project management within the organization. The PMO strives to standardize and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects. The PMO is the source of documentation, guidance, and metrics on the practice of project management and execution.
IT portfolio management is the application of systematic management to the investments, projects and activities of enterprise Information Technology (IT) departments. Examples of IT portfolios would be planned initiatives, projects, and ongoing IT services. The promise of IT portfolio management is the quantification of previously informal IT efforts, enabling measurement and objective evaluation of investment scenarios.
Project governance is the management framework within which project decisions are made. Project governance is a critical element of any project, since the accountabilities and responsibilities associated with an organization's business as usual activities are laid down in their organizational governance arrangements; seldom does an equivalent framework exist to govern the development of its capital investments (projects). For instance, the organization chart provides a good indication of who in the organization is responsible for any particular operational activity the organization conducts. But unless an organization has specifically developed a project governance policy, no such chart is likely to exist for project development activity.
Val IT is a governance framework that can be used to create business value from IT investments. It consists of a set of guiding principles and a number of processes and best practices that are further defined as a set of key management practices to support and help executive management and boards at an enterprise level. The latest release of the framework, published by IT Governance Institute (ITGI), based on the experience of global practitioners and academics, practices and methodologies was named Enterprise Value: Governance of IT Investments, The Val IT Framework 2.0. It covers processes and key management practices for three specific domains and goes beyond new investments to include IT services, assets, other resources and principles and processes for IT portfolio management.
Transition management, in the financial sense, is a service usually offered by sell side institutions to help buy side firms transition a portfolio of securities. Various events including acquisitions and management changes can cause the need for a portfolio to be transitioned. A typical example would be a mutual fund that has decided to merge two funds into one larger fund. In doing this, large quantities of securities will need to be bought and sold. Another frequent occurrence is a firm wanting to liquidate a large portfolio. The process of doing this can be very expensive. The costs include commissions, market impact, bid–offer spreads, and opportunity costs.
A vendor management system (VMS) is an Internet-enabled, often Web-based application that acts as a mechanism for business to manage and procure staffing services – temporary, and, in some cases, permanent placement services – as well as outside contract or contingent labor. Typical features of a VMS application include order distribution, consolidated billing and significant enhancements in reporting capability that outperforms manual systems and processes.
IT Application Portfolio Management (APM) is a practice that has emerged in mid to large-size information technology (IT) organizations since the mid-1990s. Application Portfolio Management attempts to use the lessons of financial portfolio management to justify and measure the financial benefits of each application in comparison to the costs of the application's maintenance and operations.
A glossary of terms relating to project management and consulting.
Edward David Asihene Obeng is a British organisational theorist, educator, and author, who serves as a professor at Henley Business School and Hult International Business School's Ashridge Executive Education. Obeng founded Pentacle and serves as its executive director. Obeng has been described variously as "a leading revolutionary" and "an agent provocateur" by the Financial Times, and by Abbey National as their "secret weapon".
Benefits realization management (BRM), also benefits management, benefits realisation or project benefits management, is a project management methodology, often visual, addressing how time and resources are invested into making desirable changes. BRM is used to manage the investment by organizations in procurement, projects, programmes and portfolios, and has been shown to increase project success across different countries and industries.
VPMi is a cloud-based suite of Project Portfolio Management software. It allows management for schedules, budgets, scope, alignment, and contains strategies, balanced scorecards, resources and documents. The VPMi suite was created to help prevent miscommunication between business units and IT staff. The VPMi suite originally comprised two software tools, VPMi Professional and VPMi Express, later merged into the new application VPMi. The application is developed by VCSonline, a company headquartered in Valley Park, just outside St. Louis, Missouri, with an additional office in Kolkata, India. VCSonline was mentioned in the 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Based IT Project and Portfolio Management Services, Worldwide.
