Project Management, ERP and PMO Glossary

Definition

The accumulated waiting, assumptions, workarounds, rework, cost and delivery risk created when a project or transformation program does not receive the decisions it needs in time.

Common misconception

Not every open decision is Decision Debt. Debt begins when teams start moving on assumptions without the decision, while dependencies and the cost of reversal grow.

For executives

Unlike technical debt, which is usually the future maintenance cost of technical choices, Decision Debt is the governance and delivery cost of delayed decisions, whether technical or not.

Review the Decision Debt approach →

Definition

The moment the new system starts being used for real business operations. The exit from testing, the entry into production.

Common misconception

Treated as the finish line. In practice go-live is only the starting point — the real validation happens during the weeks that follow (hypercare).

For executives

Go-live is a business-continuity decision, not a technical one. Do not approve without a written rollback plan.

Definition

The post go-live stabilization period (typically 2–6 weeks) during which the team provides high-intensity support and closes critical defects fast.

Common misconception

Seen as an IT-only task. Business key users and the sponsor must stay actively engaged during hypercare as well.

For executives

Define the hypercare exit criteria up front: open critical count, user acceptance signal, and return-to-normal on business KPIs.

Definition

Documenting the distance between a business requirement and the standard system. Each requirement is tagged as fit (standard covers it) or gap (customization or configuration needed).

Common misconception

Reduced to a spreadsheet. The real value is in writing down acceptance criteria and the decisions to drop requirements.

For executives

If the gap count goes past 100, fit-gap cannot close without a scope conversation. The sponsor should ask “is this really necessary?” for each gap.

Definition

The senior decision body that sets direction and priorities for the program. Attended by sponsors, business leads and the project manager.

Common misconception

Used as a status-reporting meeting. A steering committee exists to take decisions, not to listen to updates.

For executives

Walk into every steering with 2–3 explicit decisions to close. A meeting without decisions is not a steering.

Definition

The function that establishes governance, standards, reporting and delivery discipline across projects. Provides portfolio visibility, decision rhythm and execution quality.

Common misconception

Assumed to collect reports. A good PMO produces decisions, not reports — and makes bottlenecks visible to the sponsor.

For executives

When setting up a PMO, be clear about three things from day one: which decisions it will accelerate, which reports it will standardize, which conflicts it will escalate.

Definition

The service layer Canias ERP exposes for integrating with external systems, allowing other applications to invoke Canias business logic over HTTP.

Common misconception

Treated as a thin API wrapper. The correct use requires validating and logging business logic on the service side as well.

For executives

On integration projects, lock the service inventory and SLA expectations early. The number of services is a proxy for project complexity.

Definition

The formal project start meeting. Alignment on objectives, scope, roles, timeline and communication rules.

Common misconception

Treated as a morale or introduction meeting. A good kickoff is where the first scope and risk negotiation actually happens.

For executives

Fix the kickoff output on a single summary slide: objective, out-of-scope, decision rhythm, sponsor escalation path.

Definition

The planned and executed window for switching from the old system to the new. Data migration, opening balances, parallel run and downtime management happen here.

Common misconception

Seen as a single weekend effort. Real cutover is rehearsed over weeks before the event.

For executives

Run at least two cutover rehearsals and update go/no-go criteria after each one. A cutover without rehearsals is high risk.

Definition

A single register that tracks risks, assumptions, open issues and dependencies across the project. Core governance artefact.

Common misconception

Treated as just a risk list. The real value sits in the assumptions and dependencies columns — most disruptions come from there.

For executives

Only bring five items from the RAID log into each steering. The agenda is decisions pending, not the full list.

Definition

An approval point with explicit criteria the project must meet before moving from one phase to the next. Opened by the sponsor or steering committee.

Common misconception

Treated as a rubber-stamp signature. A real stage-gate can say “no” or “yes with conditions”. It does not always pass the project through.

For executives

Write the gate criteria at project start. If criteria are being negotiated at the gate, governance is weak.

Definition

A formal request to alter agreed scope, schedule or budget. Goes through impact analysis, cost review and an approval chain.

Common misconception

Seen as bureaucracy and handled verbally. Verbal changes become the biggest post go-live conflict source.

For executives

Fix the CR rule at kickoff: who raises it, within how many days it is assessed, and above which threshold it needs steering approval.

Definition

An effort unit representing one person's work for one hour. It is commonly used for fine-grained estimates, support work, small development tasks and time-based services.

Common misconception

It is often confused with elapsed time. Sixteen person-hours do not automatically mean two working days; sequencing, dependencies, parallelism and actual resource availability determine duration.

For executives

Before converting person-hours into calendar time, define the standard working-day assumption. One person-day equals eight person-hours only when an eight-hour workday is the agreed standard.

Definition

An effort unit representing one person's work for one working day. It is widely used in project estimation, proposals, budgeting, capacity planning and resource planning.

Common misconception

A person-day is not a calendar day. A 100 person-day job assigned to five people does not automatically finish in 20 working days. If work cannot be parallelized, critical dependencies exist or roles are not interchangeable, duration will not shrink proportionally.

For executives

Do not accept only the total person-day figure. Ask for role-level effort, parallelizable work, critical-path constraints and capacity assumptions as well.

Person-day: detailed explanation and examples →

Definition

An effort unit representing roughly one person's working capacity for one month. It is used in long-running projects, team capacity models and commercial planning.

Common misconception

It is treated as a universal fixed conversion. In reality, the number of person-days or person-hours in a person-month depends on the working calendar. With 20 working days and an eight-hour day, one person-month is approximately 20 person-days or 160 person-hours.

For executives

If contracts or proposals use person-months, document the conversion standard. Public holidays, leave and non-project time can materially reduce usable capacity.

Person-month: detailed explanation and conversions →

Definition

The total human work required to complete a task or project. It is typically expressed in person-hours, person-days or person-months.

Common misconception

Effort is confused with duration. Forty person-days of effort does not mean the work will take forty calendar days; effort describes workload, while duration describes elapsed time from start to finish.

For executives

Keep four values distinct in every estimate: effort, duration, capacity and cost. Once one starts being used as a proxy for another, planning errors follow.

Project effort, duration and capacity explained →

Definition

Effort is the total amount of work required; duration is the elapsed calendar time needed to complete that work. The same effort can translate into different durations depending on team structure and dependencies.

Common misconception

It is assumed that adding people reduces duration linearly. Coordination overhead, specialist dependencies, sequential work and rework often break that relationship.

For executives

If a plan answers 'how many person-days?' but cannot answer 'when will it finish and under which resource constraints?', it is not yet a schedule.

Definition

The amount of usable work time a person or team can actually allocate to a project during a given period after accounting for meetings, leave, operational work and other projects.

Common misconception

A person with 20 working days in a month is assumed to provide 20 person-days of project capacity. Operational duties, meetings and competing projects reduce that usable capacity.

For executives

Plan usable capacity, not just named resources. A specialist who is only 30% available should not be scheduled as a full-time project resource.

Definition

A normalized measure of resource capacity relative to one full-time worker over a defined period. 1.0 FTE represents full-time capacity; 0.5 FTE represents roughly half-time capacity.

Common misconception

FTE is treated as the same as headcount. Two people working at 50% each may total 1 FTE, but they do not necessarily substitute for one full-time person if their skills differ.

For executives

Use FTE to express capacity, but show role and skill composition separately. Equal capacity does not mean equal capability.

Definition

The process of deciding which role or person will perform each part of the project, when they will do it and how much capacity they can allocate.

Common misconception

Putting names next to tasks is mistaken for resource planning. Real resource planning also considers competing assignments, role constraints, leave and workload peaks.

For executives

The critical question is not simply 'who is available?' but 'which required skill is genuinely available during the critical week?'

Definition

The process of comparing project demand against the actual usable capacity of teams and roles over time, then balancing the two.

Common misconception

If annual total capacity is sufficient, the plan is assumed feasible. In practice, bottlenecks usually occur in a specific week or month around a critical role rather than in the yearly total.

For executives

Do not stop at monthly totals. For critical roles, maintain weekly visibility and explicitly manage workload peaks during analysis, architecture, testing and go-live periods.

Definition

The process of forecasting the total human work required to complete a project or work package using scope, complexity, dependencies, risk and prior experience.

Common misconception

A single estimate is treated as a fixed commitment. An estimate is a controlled forecast based on current information and should be revisited when scope or uncertainty changes.

For executives

Ask for assumptions alongside the number: scope boundaries, exclusions, role mix, uncertainty allowance and the conditions that would cause the estimate to change.