Project Management Acronyms

Any more Acronyms?

KISS... Keep It Simple and Straight (there is another option for the second S)
Although not specific to PM domains and being used in everyday's life, I tend to use it a lot as a PM to fight procrastinating and overcomplicating things!

George -

Here's ATDD from the Agile Practice Guide: "A method of collaboratively creating acceptance test criteria that are used to create acceptance tests before delivery begins."

I would have defined it as a good development practice which reduces gold-plating and increases quality by developing acceptance tests first and then developing only as much of the solution as is required to pass those acceptance tests.

I will present PERT - Program Evaluation & Review Technique which as per Wikipedia is "a method of analyzing the tasks involved in completing a given project, especially the time needed to complete each task, and to identify the minimum time needed to complete the total project."

Of course, the 5th edition of the PMBOK Guide took a different view focused purely on the use of the PERT formula: "A technique for estimating that applies a weighted average of optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely estimates when there is uncertainty with the individual activity estimates." Still, that's better than the 6th edition which eliminated PERT!

My favorite non-acronym is Gantt - I'm always amused when I see someone capitalize all the letters in it or try to come up with "what it stands for". Henry Gantt must be revolving at high speed in his grave whenever that happens!

Kiron