Business and Project Management Concepts
A few commonly used concepts/ideas/terms that you may hear in production in the context of business, bids, schedules, and project management:
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Agile: A way of managing projects that is different from the traditional/waterfall project management. The practice is most commonly used in software development, but is now being adapted to different areas of work. In contrast, it produces deliverables more iteratively and team structures and meetings are vastly different. It prioritizes the constant delivery of requests until a sprint or the time allotted to the task is exhausted as opposed to long term planning and scheduling.
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Bottleneck: A point in a process where things slow down because one step takes longer than the others — like traffic piling up at a one-lane bridge.
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Break-Even: The point where your income exactly covers your costs — you’re not making money yet, but you’re not losing any either.
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Dependency: A task or part of a project that can’t start until something else is finished — like you can’t frost a cake until it’s baked.
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Economies of Scale: A strategic idea suggesting that in grouping similar tasks or deliverables together, the amount of effort and time it takes to produce lessens over time.
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KPI / Key Performance Indicator: A number or goal that helps you track how well you're doing — like counting sales per month or how fast you answer customer emails.
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Law of Diminishing Returns: When the benefits gained from a process, person, etc. eventually decreases in value over time despite continuing the investment on the said process, person, etc.
e.g.) Assigning 2 texture artists to complete an asset bid for 10 days could fast track the work to be completed in 1 week instead of 2 (this is the benefit). Assigning 5 artists COULD shrink it to 2 days, but it’s likely that the tasks assigned will require more than 8h due to the nature of the processes involved. So, even though more artists are assigned, the asset may still be completed LONGER than 2 days. Further, assigning 10 artists to the asset will NOT mean it can be completed in 1 day. Not to mention highly unlikely to find, and likely to be more costly.
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Lean Thinking: A method that focuses on doing more with less — cutting out waste and only working on what adds real value.
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: A way to understand human motivation — people need basics like food and safety first, then things like friendships, and finally purpose or personal growth.
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Murphy’s Law: A humorous saying: “Anything that can go wrong, will.” It’s often used as a reminder to plan for problems in advance.
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Opportunity Cost: When you choose one thing, you give up another — like choosing to work late instead of going out with friends. The value of what you gave up is the opportunity cost.
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Parkinson’s Law: Work tends to stretch out to fill the time you give it — if you have a week to do a task, it’ll take a week, even if it could be done in a day.
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Pearson’s Law: When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.
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ROI / Return on Investment: Return of Investment; the amount of what can be gained in exchange for the cost spent.
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Six Sigma: A process for improving quality and reducing mistakes — like making sure a product works almost perfectly every time.
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Supply and Demand: If lots of people want something (high demand) and there isn’t much of it (low supply), the price goes up — and vice versa.
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Sunk Cost: Money or time you’ve already spent and can’t get back — and shouldn't affect new decisions, even though it often does.
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SWOT Analysis: A simple tool to look at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats when planning or solving problems.
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Waterfall: A traditional way of managing projects where each phase is done in order — plan everything first, then build, then test, with little change allowed along the way.
