Project management glossary: terms from A to Z.

Project management, agile and customer service terms, explained in a few sentences with everyday examples. Each definition points to the guide, template or Tasskee feature when there is one to go deeper.

5

5W2H

A planning method that turns an idea into an action plan by answering seven questions: what, why, where, when, who, how and how much it costs. Each action in the plan becomes a row with the seven answers, which prevents tasks with no owner or no due date. See the 5W2H guide and the spreadsheet template.

A

Acceptance

Formal confirmation that the client received a deliverable and considers it in line with what was agreed. It's what closes a stage and, in many contracts, releases payment. The clearer the acceptance criteria at the start, the less arguing at the end. There's a delivery acceptance form template, and Tasskee lets you collect signed acceptance through a public link from forms.

B

Backlog

A prioritized list of everything that still needs to be done on a product or project. What's at the top goes in first. The backlog changes all the time: new items appear, others lose importance and drop out. See the backlog and sprint template.

Burndown

A chart that shows the remaining work over time, usually for a sprint. The ideal line drops steadily to zero on the last day; the actual line shows whether the team is ahead or behind. It's a quick alert, but it doesn't explain the cause of a delay. It shows up in the context of sprints.

C

Critical path

The sequence of dependent tasks that determines the project's end date. If any task on the critical path slips, the whole project slips; tasks off it have slack. In a renovation, for example, the sequence demolition, utilities, tiling and painting is usually the critical path. Tasskee's schedule shows the critical path in the Gantt chart. More in the Gantt chart guide.

Ticket

A request for help or service opened by a customer or employee, with a number, assignee, status and due date. It can be a defect, a question or a request. A ticket turns a loose conversation into something you can follow and measure. See tickets in Tasskee and the SLA guide.

Checklist

A list of simple items to check off inside a task, like the steps of an inspection or the documents in a registration. Unlike a subtask, a checklist item has no assignee or due date of its own: it's just a done or not done mark.

Schedule

A plan that shows what will be done, by whom and on what dates, with the order and dependencies between activities. It can be a table, but it's usually drawn as a Gantt chart. A good schedule has a few clear milestones and deadlines the team helped estimate. See the project schedule template.

Cycle time

The time a task takes from the moment someone starts working on it until delivery. It differs from lead time, which counts from the request. If the average cycle time for a type of task is 3 days, you can forecast deadlines with more confidence. See the Kanban guide.

D

Daily

A quick meeting, up to 15 minutes, where the team syncs on the day's work. It's Scrum's daily meeting, and usually answers what was done, what will be done and what's blocking progress. It's not a status meeting for the manager: it's for the team to organize itself. See the Scrum guide.

Definition of done

A list of criteria a deliverable must meet to be considered done, such as tested, reviewed and documented. It prevents the "almost done" that comes back as rework. Each team defines its own and revisits it over time.

Dependency

A relationship in which one task can only start or finish after another. The most common is finish-to-start: plastering only starts after the brickwork is finished. Poorly mapped dependencies are a frequent cause of delay. Tasskee lets you link tasks with dependencies in the schedule.

E

WBS

Work Breakdown Structure. It's the division of scope into smaller and smaller parts, from deliverables down to work packages, so that everything to be done appears somewhere. A good WBS describes deliverables, not loose activities, and is the starting point for the schedule. See the WBS template.

Deliverable

A concrete, verifiable result the project produces, such as a report, a live website or an approved blueprint. If you can't say how someone checks that it's done, it's not yet a well-defined deliverable.

Epic

A large backlog item that groups several related user stories and is broken into smaller pieces before entering the sprint. Example: "Client portal" can be an epic containing login, order list and duplicate invoice issuing.

Scope

The set of what will be delivered in a project, and also what won't. Poorly defined scope is the main source of delays and arguments with the client. The extra request halfway through has a name: scope creep. See the project brief template.

F

Cumulative flow

A chart that stacks, over time, how many tasks are in each stage of the flow. The thickness of each band shows where work piles up. A band that gets fatter is a sign of a bottleneck. See the flow page.

Workstream

A way of grouping tasks within a project that cuts across stages and sprints. On a construction job, for example, "electrical" and "plumbing" can be workstreams; in a marketing project, "content" and "paid media." It's not the same as a sprint, which is a period of time.

G

Gantt

A horizontal bar chart in which each bar represents a task, with a start, an end and links to the others. It gives a view of the project over time and shows what delays what. It's named after Henry Gantt, the engineer who popularized it in the early 20th century. See the Gantt chart guide and Tasskee's Gantt.

Bottleneck

The stage of the process that limits the capacity of everything else. If review is done by a single person, speeding up production doesn't help: the work will pile up in the review queue. Identifying the bottleneck is the first step to improving flow.

H

Help desk

A central point that receives and resolves help requests from users and customers, organizing everything into tickets with priority and due date. It can be internal, like a company's IT support, or external, like customer support. See the SLA guide and the tickets feature.

Billable hours

Hours worked that can be charged to the client. Those the company absorbs, such as internal meetings and training, are non-billable. The ratio between the two tells you how much of the team's time turns into revenue. See the timesheet guide and time tracking in Tasskee.

I

Increment

The part of the product completed and usable at the end of a sprint, added to everything that had been delivered before. It's the proof of progress in Scrum: it's not a report, it's something that works.

K

Kanban

A method that uses a board with columns to show the progress of work, limits what's in progress at the same time and measures the time of each task. It was born at Toyota and today is also used by marketing, HR, support and IT. See the Kanban guide and Tasskee's Kanban board.

KPI

Key Performance Indicator: a number that tracks the health of an area or process, such as the percentage of tickets resolved within the deadline. A good KPI has a clear source, a target and an owner. Not to be confused with an OKR's key result, which is a target for change in a period.

L

Lead time

The total time between a task being requested and its delivery, including waiting in the queue. It's the wait the client perceives. If a task is requested on Monday, starts on Thursday and finishes on Friday, the lead time is five days and the cycle time is two. See the Kanban guide.

WIP limit

The maximum number of tasks that can be in progress at the same time in a stage. WIP stands for work in progress. By limiting what stays open, the team finishes what it started before picking up more, and flow improves. A common starting point is the number of people in the stage, or a little less.

M

Milestone

A project checkpoint, with no duration, that marks an important achievement, such as approval of the executive design or go-live. It lets the client and management follow progress without getting into task detail. It appears as a diamond in the Gantt chart.

RACI matrix

A table that defines, for each activity, who is Responsible for the work, who is Accountable, who is Consulted and who is Informed. It avoids the classic "I thought it was you." Only one final accountable person per activity. See the RACI matrix guide and the template.

MCP

Model Context Protocol: a standard that lets an AI agent connect to a system and operate it, reading and carrying out actions. In Tasskee, the MCP server lets the customer's AI agent work on the project, such as creating tasks or checking progress, within the account's permissions. See the AI assistant.

O

OKR

Objectives and Key Results: a method for setting an ambitious goal and measuring progress with a few numbers. The objective says where to get to; the key results say how you'll know you got there. See the OKR guide, the template and goals in Tasskee.

P

PDCA

A continuous improvement cycle with four steps: Plan, Do, Check and Act. You plan a change, apply it on a small scale, check the result and, if it worked, standardize it. It's the basis of a lot of quality management.

Planning

The sprint planning meeting. The team chooses, from the top of the backlog, what it can deliver in the cycle and defines how it will do it. The team decides the amount of work, not the manager. See the Scrum guide.

Story points

A relative measure of effort used to estimate user stories, instead of hours. A 5-point task is, roughly, more work than a 2-point one, without promising how many hours. Comparing points with actual hours helps calibrate the estimate. See the timesheet guide.

Portfolio

The set of an organization's projects, viewed together to decide where to put people and money. Instead of looking at one project at a time, the portfolio shows what's on schedule, what's at risk and where capacity is lacking.

Product owner

In Scrum, the person responsible for defining and prioritizing the backlog, that is, for deciding what to build first to create the most value. They represent the customer and stakeholders, and answer for the product's outcome. See the Scrum guide.

R

Key result

A measure that shows whether an OKR objective was achieved, with a starting value, a target value and a deadline. "Raise NPS from 40 to 60 by December" is a key result; "improve customer service" is not. In Tasskee, a goal's progress is calculated from its key results. See the OKR guide.

Retrospective

A meeting at the end of the sprint where the team talks about what worked, what didn't and what will change. One or two concrete actions come out of it, with an owner, for the next cycle. Without action, it turns into venting. See the Scrum guide.

Risk

An uncertain event that, if it happens, affects the project for better or worse. Managing risks means listing what could go wrong, estimating the likelihood and impact, and agreeing on what to do before it happens. A risk that has materialized stops being a risk and becomes a problem.

S

Scrum master

In Scrum, the person who helps the team follow the method and removes impediments. Not the team's boss or a project manager: the role is to facilitate. See the Scrum guide.

Scrum

An agile framework for developing products in short cycles, called sprints, with defined roles (product owner, scrum master and team) and meetings: planning, daily, review and retrospective. It was born in software, but is used in marketing, product and operations. See the Scrum guide and the sprints feature.

SLA

Service Level Agreement: the commitment on time to respond to and resolve requests, such as a first response within 1 hour and resolution within 1 business day. It can be with the customer or between internal teams. See the SLA guide and the post on SLAs in practice.

Sprint

A fixed period of work, usually one to four weeks, at the end of which the team delivers an increment. The dates don't change: what changes is the amount of work that fits. See sprints in Tasskee.

Sprint review

A meeting at the end of the sprint where the team shows stakeholders what was delivered and collects their feedback. The focus is the product, and the feedback feeds the backlog.

Stakeholder

Any person or group affected by the project or who can influence it: client, sponsor, team, supplier, neighboring department. Mapping stakeholders early avoids the surprise of someone who only shows up to veto in the home stretch. The RACI matrix helps define who needs which information.

Status report

A short progress report that tells what was done, what's planned, what's at risk and what needs a decision. Weekly or biweekly, it fits on one page. See the weekly status report template or how Tasskee's Status Report builds the report from project data.

T

Time in status

How long a task stayed in each stage of the flow. It shows where work waits: if tasks spend three days in "awaiting approval" and half a day in "in progress," the problem is in approval. See the flow page.

Timesheet

A record of the hours each person spent on each project or client, used to bill by the hour, pay contractors and calculate margin. It's not a time clock or working-hours control. See the timesheet guide and the project timesheet spreadsheet.

U

User story

A short description of a need from the point of view of the person who will use it. The classic format is "as a [type of user], I want [action], so that [benefit]." For example: "as a client, I want to follow the progress of the construction, so I know whether the deadline will be met." See the backlog and sprint template.

V

Velocity

The amount of work, measured in points or tasks, that the team completes per sprint. Calculated from the last few sprints, it helps predict how much fits in the next one. It's for planning, not for comparing teams, because each one estimates in its own way.