August 2012 - RationalPlan

Project Management Terms – Project

A Project is a temporary set of actions which aim to create a unique, final deliverable.

This concise project definition reveals the major differences between characteristics of projects and operations:

Is temporary which means that is subject to change at a certain moment. In fact since it might change at any moment in time makes it rather transient than temporary.
Its outcome is unique. Although the product or service may be included in a large category (e.g. a building, a software product), the details can give the uniqueness of a project result.

A similar definition can be found into A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide): “A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service”.

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2012-08-28T13:48:22+00:00August 28th, 2012|Project Management Glossary|Comments Off

Is RationalPlan Supported On Mac OS X Mountain Lion?

In the recently released Mac OS X Mountain Lion the Gatekeeper was introduced that by default does not allow users to run applications downloaded outside of the App Store. In this situation are also the RationalPlan users that are downloading our products directly from our website.

So if you find yourself a Mountain Lion user and when trying to install RationalPlan you get an error like this one:

you can solve it by going to Apple menu > System Preferences… > Security & Privacy > General tab and under the header “Allow applications downloaded from:” check the Anywhere box. This will allow you to install RationalPlan. However after the install is complete you might want to set it back to Mac App Store and identified developers. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00August 28th, 2012|RationalPlan|Comments Off

Project Management Terms – Critical Path

Critical Path is the sequence of activities for which the slightest delay will influence the end of the project. The critical path of a project may change in time according to the new changes of the project schedule. In a project there can be several critical paths. Tasks that compose the critical path are called critical tasks.

Critical tasks need a special attention as they are more likely to compromise the completion date. Sometimes the project manager needes to see those tasks that could delay the project finish if they are late with a certain amount of time, in other words the tasks with a slack smaller than a given value.

In RationalPlan Project Management Software the Critical Path can be displayed by pressing the corresponding button from the toolbar while in Gantt view.

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00August 20th, 2012|Project Management Glossary|1 Comment

Project Management Terms – Assumptions

Assumptions are factors considered to be true in the planning phase.

As they are not certitudes, a certain degree of risk is involved. In fact, in Risk Identification process as part of the Project Risk Management, assumptions analysis takes an important role. Also, in Qualitative Risk Analysis, assumptions are important input data.

Examples of assumptions:

a person or equipment will be available at a certain date
the weather will allow an outdoor operation at a certain date
stakeholders will take a decision in the next meeting

Assumptions should be documented as part of the basis for the risks list. In RationalPlan Project Management Software a special step of the Project Guide is assigned for Assumptions and Constraints definition.

By Lucian Ioan|2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00August 6th, 2012|Project Management Glossary|Comments Off