Project Management Glossary
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Maintainability: the ease of performing maintenance on a product

Make-or-buy decision: when an organization decides if it is in their best interests to make certain products or perform certain services inside the organization, or if it is better to buy them from an out side organization

Malcolm Baldrige Award: an award started in 1987 to recognize companies that have achieved a level of world-class com petition through quality management

Management reserves: dollars included in a cost estimate to allow for future situations that are unpredictable (sometimes called unknown unknowns)

Mandatory dependencies: sequencing of project activities or tasks that are inherent in the nature of the work being done on the project.

Matrix organizational structure: an organizational structure in which employees are assigned to both functional and project managers

Maturity model: a framework for helping organizations improve their processes and systems

Mean: the average value of a population

Measurement and test equipment cost: the capital cost of equipment used to per form prevention and appraisal activities

Merge: when two or more nodes precede a single node on a project network diagram.

Milestone: a significant event on a project with zero duration.

Mirroring: the matching of certain behaviors of the other person.

Monte Carlo analysis: a risk quantification technique that simulates a model’s outcome many times, to provide a statistical distribution of the calculated results.

Multitasking: when a resource works on more than one task at a time.

Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, it will.

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