| Activities |
Tasks that support and/or produce a project's products and services; they serve as the basis for estimating the project's schedule, resources, and costs |
| "Applied to" |
In evaluation usage, the project's target audience or the part of that group for whom you will measure the indicators, e.g., a group of people who participate in a certain time period or for a certain number of times |
| Assumption |
Proposition or principle which you suppose is true or take for granted |
| Attitude |
What someone feels or thinks about something |
| Audience |
Individual, group or institution for which the organization's products and services are provided, e.g., library patrons, museum visitors, other libraries, museums or partner institutions.
Target audience: individual, group, or institution that is the focus of the project's goals |
| Behavior |
How someone acts |
| Beneficiary |
Immediate: target audience that will experience the project's desired results in the earliest stages of its implementation, and whose involvement may be necessary to ensure that the organization's goals or desired results are achieved
Intermediate: target audience that will experience the project's desired results within one to two years of the implementation of the project's activities
Long-term: audience that will experience the project's desired results after the project is concluded
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| Benefit |
Gain or payoff accruing to the project stakeholders, including target
audiences, as a result of the project |
| Budget |
Total estimated cost of your project, including direct costs associated with each of your project's activities, as well as indirect costs |
| Characteristics of target audience |
Attributes--e.g., age, geographic location, number, job position--of the target audience that you should take into account in analyzing their needs |
| Communication strategy |
Outline of the messages you want to convey to stakeholders about your project's processes and results; the most efficient and effective channels and timing for transmitting the message; and the means for obtaining feedback on your message |
| Costs |
Direct costs: personnel, materials, and services expenses associated with specific project activities
Indirect costs: project expenses, e.g. energy, rent, and insurance, that cannot be directly tied to a specific project activity |
| Cost-benefit analysis |
Comparison of the total cost of doing the project with the anticipated value or payoff of the project; a formal analysis involves calculating the ratio of the numerical value of the anticipated benefits to the anticipated costs |
| Data analysis |
Organization, processing, and presentation of information you collected for the purpose of making recommendations or drawing conclusions |
| Data collection interval |
The points in time and the frequency with which you will collect or assess information about the project's results |
| Data source |
Instruments, records, or other resources you will use to provide information about your project's needs analysis and evaluation; examples include written surveys, interviews, structured observation, documents |
| Direct costs |
Personnel, materials, and services expenses associated with specific project activities |
| Dissemination plan |
Strategy for making the project's results, products, processes or benefits transparent and accessible through effective communication channels to a broad and diverse audience so that the results of the project will continue beyond the term of the project |
| Design and development activities |
Tasks you perform to outline the solution to your project (design) and to flesh out the design and create a product or service (development) |
| Desired result |
Goal you want your project to achieve or provide for its stakeholders; it could be expressed as an outcome or an output |
| Evaluation |
Evaluation activities: tasks you perform to measure the extent to which your project has met its goals
Evaluation approach: unified set of principles, methods, rules, and processes for assessing and demonstrating the extent to which a project has met its goals |
| Formal research |
Set of systematic procedures recognized by a community of scholars for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data for some purpose; enables you to draw tentative conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships among phenomena, e.g., your project's services and benefits to the target audience, and about the effectiveness of one approach or project in comparison to another one |
| Gantt chart |
Bar chart that shows graphically the duration, including the start and end dates, of the project's activities, as well as its milestones; can also show the relationships between the project's activities, e.g., the finish of one task before another begins |
| Goals |
At the organization level, the broad results your organization wants to achieve for its audiences during a specific period of time, which guide the selection of programs and management/operations functions; can be expressed as an output or an outcome
At the project level, the specific results you want your project to accomplish for its target audience(s), which guide the development of the project's activities and milestones and define the scope of what you can accomplish within a specific time frame; can be expressed as an output or an outcome |
| Implementation activities |
Tasks that you perform to deliver the project's final products or services to the target audience, e.g., publicizing the product or service, inviting and registering participants, obtaining and preparing materials, training instructors |
| Indirect costs |
Project expenses, e.g., energy, rent, and insurance, that cannot be directly tied to a specific project activity |
| Indicators |
Measurable conditions or behaviors that can show an outcome was achieved; usually expressed as a number and/or percentage of the target audience that demonstrates a measurable sign or characteristic representing the intended outcome |
| Informal research |
Set of procedures that can be documented to collect, analyze, and interpret data and draw conclusions with enough confidence and credibility to serve the purposes of project management |
| Knowledge |
What someone knows |
| Life condition |
Someone's physical or psychological condition |
| Milestone |
Signpost or marker that shows accomplishment of logically related activities, e.g., design and development or achievement of the project's interim or final targets |
| Mission |
Overall purpose of an organization; typically identifies key broad audiences and purposes, and often broadly describes the methods by which the organization will achieve its mission |
| Monitoring |
Steps or processes for continual tracking of current performance
in relation to a plan--e.g., schedules and budgets, number of
services provided, number of participating institutions or people--and
for identification of any corrective steps necessary to improve
performance |
| Need |
Gap between the desired results, on the one hand, and the current condition of the audience, product or service, on the other |
| Needs analysis |
Systematic process of identifying the gap between what you want to achieve for your audience (or product or service), on the one hand, and its current state, on the other, and determining appropriate solutions to close the gap |
| Organization |
Entity or collaborating entities that will plan and do the project: entities
can be departments or divisions within a larger institution |
| Outcome |
Gain or change in an individual's knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviors, status, or life condition |
| Outcome based evaluation approach (OBE) |
Set of principles and processes to provide information about the degree to which a project has met its goals in terms of creating benefits for individuals in the form of knowledge, skill, attitude, behavior, status, or life condition |
| Output |
Measure of the amount, the quality, or volume of use of a product or service |
| Output based evaluation approach |
Set of principles and processes to provide
information about the degree to which the project's products
and services have achieved the desired result; e.g., the quantity
or quality of services, the volume of users or participants,
or the number of products that met the target audience's expectations |
| Output measure |
Measurable unit showing that an output was achieved, usually expressed as a number and/or a percentage |
| Personnel |
Permanent and temporary staff, as well as consultants |
| Pilot test |
Dry run of a process, such as a workshop or training session, on a selected group of people in a realistic setting, to obtain feedback and make necessary adjustments before delivery of the finalized product or service to the target audience |
| Product |
Anything created or obtained as a result of some operation or work |
| Project |
Series of related activities that has a discrete beginning and end and is intended to produce a desired result for its target audience |
| Project director |
Main person responsible for the project; coordinates all project tasks and promotes good relationships and communications among all team members |
| Project sponsor |
Senior management representative who mobilizes and maintains support for the project from the internal organization(s) responsible for planning and doing the project |
| Prototype |
Draft or model on which subsequent versions will be based and on which participants will give feedback |
| Rapid prototyping |
Process in which product or service developers work closely with target audience representatives to create and update drafts or models on which subsequent versions will be based |
| Requirements activities |
Tasks that you perform to create or validate the specifications of the project solution based on your target audience's needs, wants, and characteristics, and on other product or service requirements (e.g. technical standards) |
| Resources |
Personnel, materials, equipment, supplies, and support services that are assigned to each of the activities in your project plan; along with the schedule, they are the basis for creating your project budget |
| Risk |
Potential events or conditions that could have a positive or a negative impact on the project goals |
| Risk analysis |
Process of identifying risks, analyzing the likelihood that they will occur and the degree of impact that they will have on the project goals, and selecting strategies to eliminate or manage them |
| Sample |
In conducting your target audience needs analysis or your project evaluation, a representative subgroup to which you will apply the selected data source to gain information about the whole group |
| Schedule |
Includes the start and finish dates of the project and each of the project activities; can also include the milestones or markers showing accomplishment of logically related activities or targets, as well as relationships among the activities |
| Scope |
Boundary of the project described in the project plan, including the need that will be addressed, the target audience, the goals that will be achieved within a certain time frame, the main activities that will be performed, the project performers, and the outcome, product or service that will result; by implication anything that is not included in these components is "out of scope" |
| Service |
Activity carried on to provide people with the use of something |
| Skill |
What someone can do |
| SMART |
Acronym describing goals or targets that are specific, measurable, acceptable to key stakeholders, realistic, and time-framed |
| Solution |
Approach, including a product and/or service, to close a gap between the desired result you want to achieve for an audience and the current state or condition |
| Stakeholder |
Any individual, group, or organization that influences or is affected by the project; can be external to your organization, e.g., partners, boards, grant-making organizations, target audiences and users, or internal to your organization, e.g., management project team members, and other staff |
| Status |
Someone's social or professional condition |
| Subject matter expert |
Person who provides specialized expertise at various phases or steps of the project |
| Sustainability activities |
Tasks you perform to ensure that the project's benefits extend beyond the period of a grant or the "official" conclusion of your project |
| Target |
Measurable amount of success you believe your project can and should achieve within a certain time frame
If the target is expressed as a output, it refers to the amount, quality, or volume of use you believe your project can and should achieve within a certain time frame
If the target is expressd as an outcome, it refers to the measurable amount of success you believe your project can and should achieve with regard to the target audience's knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviors, status, or life condition, within a certain period of time
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| Target audience |
Individuals, groups, or organizations that will be the focus or beneficiary of the products or services of your project |
| Testing activities |
Tasks to ensure that the project's products and services will perform effectively and meet the needs and wants of the target audiences |
| Wants |
Wishes or desires of the target audience(s) that should be taken into consideration in determining the most appropriate solution or solutions to meet an identified need |
