Glossary

Term	Definition
Acceptance Criteria	A prioritised list of criteria that the final product(s) must meet before the Customer will accept them. They should be defined as part of the Project Directive and agreed between Customer and Supplier no later than the Project Initiation Stage. They should be in the Project Foundation Document.
Action Log	A log of all Actions raised during the project, showing details of each action, which Issues or Risks it refers to and what decisions about it have been made and its current status.
Baseline	A snapshot; a position or situation that is recorded. Although the position may be updated later, the baseline remains unchanged and available as a reminder of the original state and as a comparison against the current position.
Business Case	Information that describes the justification for setting up and continuing a PROMISE project. It provides the reasons (answers the question 'Why?') for the project. It is updated at key points throughout the project.
Chairman	The chairman of the Project Board, representing the Customer.
Change Authority	A group to which the Project Board may delegate responsibility for the consideration of Requests For Change. The Change Authority is given a budget and can approve changes within that budget.
Change Budget	The money allocated to the Change Authority to be spent on authorised Requests For Change.
Change Control	The procedure to ensure that the processing of all Project Issues is controlled, including the submission, analysis and decision-making.
Checkpoint	A team level, time-driven review of progress.
Checkpoint Report	A progress report of the information gathered at a Checkpoint meeting, which is given by a team to the Project Manager, and provides reporting data as defined in the Project Foundation Document.
Configuration Management	A discipline, normally supported by software tools, which gives management precise control over its assets (e.g. the products of a project), covering identification, control, status accounting and verification of the products.
Contingency Plan	A plan that provides an outline of decisions and measures to be taken if defined circumstances, outside the control of a PROMISE project, should occur.
Customer	The person or group who commissioned the work and will benefit from the end results.
Deliverable	An item that the project has to create as part of the requirements. It may be part of the final outcome or an intermediate element on which one or more subsequent deliverables are dependent. According to the type of project, another name for a deliverable is 'product'.
End Project Report	A report given by the Project Manager to the Project Board, which confirms the hand-over of all deliverables, provides an updated Business Case and an assessment of how well the project has done against its Project Foundation Document.
End Stage Assessment	The review by the Project Board and Project Manager of the End Stage Report to decide whether to approve the Next Stage Plan (unless the last stage has now been completed). According to the size and criticality of the project, the review may be formal or informal. The approval to proceed should be documented as an important management product.
End Stage Report	A report given by the Project Manager to the Project Board at the end of each management stage of the project. This provides information about the project performance during the stage and the project status at stage end.
Exception	A situation where it can be forecast that there will be a deviation beyond the tolerance levels agreed between Project Manager and Project Board (or between Project Board and corporate or programme management).
Exception Plan	A plan that follows an Exception Report. For a Stage Plan exception it covers the period from the present to the end of the current stage. If the exception is at a project level, the Project Plan would be revised.
Exception Report	A report that describes an exception provides an analysis and options for the way forward and identifies a recommended option. The Project Manager gives it to the Project Board.
Follow-on Action Recommendations	A report which can be used as input to the process of creating a Business Case/ Project Directive for any follow-on PROMISE project, and for recording any follow-on instructions covering incomplete products or outstanding issues. It also sets out proposals for Post Implementation Review of the project's products.
Highlight Report	Report from the Project Manager to the Project Board on a time-driven frequency on stage progress.
Issue Log	A log of all issues and change requests raised during the project, showing details of each issue, its evaluation, what decisions about it have been made and its current status.
Lessons Learned Report	A report that describes the lessons learned in undertaking the project and which includes statistics from the quality control of the project's management products. It is approved by the Project Board, and then held centrally for the benefit of future projects.
Non-Compliance	Something that should be provided by the project, but currently is not (or is forecast not to be provided). This might be a missing product or a product not meeting its specification.
Outcome	The result of a project. Useful term where the project result is not an easily definable 'product'.
Post Implementation Review	One or more reviews held after project closure to determine if the expected benefits have been obtained.
Process	That which must be done to bring about a particular outcome, in terms of information to be gathered, decisions to be made and results which must be achieved.
Producer	This role represents the creator(s) of a document that is the subject of a Quality Review. Typically it will be filled by the person who has produced the product, or who led the team responsible.
Product	Any input to or output from a project. A product may itself be a collection of other products.
Product Description	A description of a product's purpose, composition, derivation and quality criteria. It is produced at planning time, as soon as the need for the product is identified.
Project	A temporary organisation that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified business case.
Project Assurance	The Project Board's responsibility to assure itself that the project is being conducted correctly.
Project Closure Notification	Advice from the Project Manager to inform the host location that the project resources can be disbanded and support services, such as space, equipment and access, demobilised.
Project Foundation Document (PFD)	A logical document whose purpose is to bring together the key information needed to start the project on a sound basis; and to convey that information to all concerned with the project.
Project Issue	A term used to cover both general issues and change requests raised during the project. Project Issues can be about anything to do with the project. They cover questions, suggestions, Requests For Change and Non-Compliances.
Project Management	The planning, monitoring and control of all aspects of the project and the motivation of all those involved in it to achieve the project objectives on time and to the specified cost, quality and performance.
Project Management Team	A term to represent the entire management structure of Project Board, Project Manager, plus any Team Managers and project assurance roles.
Project Manager	The person given the authority and responsibility to manage the project on a day-today basis to deliver the required products within the constraints agreed with the Project Board.
Project Plan	A high-level plan showing the major products of the project, when they will be delivered and at what cost. An Initial Project Plan is presented as part of the Project Foundation Document. This is revised in later versions as information on actual progress appears. It is a major control document for the Project Board to measure actual progress against expectations.
Project Quality Plan	The definition of key quality criteria and quality control and audit processes to be applied to project management and technical work in the PROMISE project. It will be part of the text in the Project Foundation Document.
Project Records	A collection of all approved management, specialist and quality products and other material, which is necessary to provide an auditable record of the project.
Project Start-up Notification	Advice to all concerned that the project is about to start and requesting any required project support services.
Project Support Office	A group set up to provide certain administrative services to the Project Manager. Often the group provides its services to many projects.
PROMISE	A method that supports some selected aspects of project management. The acronym stands for PROject Management In Software Environments.
PROMISE Project	A project whose product(s) can be defined at its start sufficiently precisely as to be measurable against pre-defined metrics and which is managed according to the PROMISE method.
Quality	The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs.
Quality Management System	The complete set of quality standards, procedures and responsibilities for a site or organisation.
Request For Change	A means of proposing a modification to the current specification of the product required. It is one type of Project Issue.
Stage	A division of the project for management purposes. The Project Board approves the project to proceed one stage at a time.
Supplier	Supplier is defined as the group or groups responsible for the supply of the project's products.
Supplier Director	The Project Board role which provides knowledge and experience of the main discipline(s) involved in the production of the project's deliverable(s).
System Response Document (SRD)	This document is written by the supplier as a response to the User Requirements Document (URD). It demonstrates to the user the understanding of what is to be supplied, and how it will be supplied and perform, and is the basis of the contract between the Supplier and the Project Board.
Tolerance	The permissible deviation above and below a plan's estimate of time and cost without escalating the deviation to the next level of management. Separate tolerance figures should be given for time and cost.
User Director	A member of the Project Board, accountable for ensuring that user needs are specified correctly and that the solution meets those needs.
User Requirements Document (URD)	The highest level document in which the user describes what are the expected requirements written in such a way that the user can understand them. This is the basis of the System Response Document (SRD) which forms the basis of the contract between the Supplier and the Project Board.
User(s)	The person or group who will use the final deliverable(s) of the project.
Waiver	A Non-Compliance that is accepted by the Project Board without corrective action.