Basic concepts

This glossary explains the terms that recur throughout the help and how they fit together. The essentials: an organisation contains projects; a project, phases; a phase, tasks; and the people of the organisation work in them with an account role (what they can do in the application) and a team role (what part they play in each project).

How they relate

Organisation
 ├─ People (with or without an account)
 ├─ Catalogues (templates, currencies, team roles…)
 └─ Projects
     ├─ Team (people with a team role)
     ├─ Phases ─ sub-phases (up to 3 levels)
     │    └─ Tasks
     ├─ Issues, risks, change requests, expenses
     └─ Contacts, communications, meeting minutes, documents

Organisation

The “workspace” of a company or team. Everything you create (projects, people, catalogues) belongs to an organisation and is not mixed with another's. Yours is created when you sign up. One account can belong to several organisations; an organisation selector then appears in the header (Several organisations).

Project

A piece of work with a client, dates and, optionally, an hour budget. It has an automatic code (P02600001), a status (Planned, In progress, On hold, Closed), a currency and an owning PM. It is created from a template or blank. See Create a project and Project list, statuses and codes.

Phase and sub-phase

A stage of the project (Analysis, Testing…). A phase can have sub-phases up to a maximum of three levels. Its progress is calculated from its tasks. Code F001. See Phases and sub-phases.

Task

The unit of work: it has a title, status, priority, dates, estimated hours, assignees and logged hours. It is always created inside a phase. Code T0001. See Tasks.

Issue

Something that has already happened and has to be resolved. It has a severity, a status (from the Issue statuses catalogue) and can be linked to a phase or task. It is different from a risk, which is something that might happen. Code I0001. See Issues and Risks.

Other project records

Risks (R), change requests (S), expenses (G), contacts (C), meeting minutes (A), communications (M), documents (D) and time entries (H) follow the same code pattern. The full reference adds the project: P02600001-T0003. Codes do not change and are not reused. See Short codes.

Person

Any member of the organisation's team. They can be:

• With an account: signs in to PjMan with their email and password.
• Without an account: exists only as a name; they do not sign in, but can have tasks and hours, which the PM manages.

See People of the organisation.

Account role

What an account can do in the application. Two are active:

Whoever signs up is a PM; whoever accepts an invitation is always a Consultant/Developer. A third value, Administrator, exists, reserved for the future and with no functions today. See Roles and access.

Team role

A person's part in a project (Director, Team Leader, PM, Consultant, Developer) or, in the case of the CEO, across the whole organisation. Each role has a level that decides how much of the project is visible:

The team role and the account role are independent: someone can have a Consultant/Developer account and the Director team role in a project; to write or manage they still need to be the owning PM. The catalogue is managed in Team roles and assigned in the Project team. The CEO is an “entire organisation” role: they see all projects read-only from the Organisation dashboard.

Catalogue (master data)

A list of values that feeds drop-downs: templates, currencies, expense types… See Master data and catalogues.

Progress

The progress percentage of a task, phase or project is always calculated with the same rule throughout the application; see Project summary.

Related topics

• Your organisation and your first project
• Roles and access
• Team roles
• People of the organisation