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| Acceptance - The formal process of accepting delivery of a product or deliverable. |
| Acceptance criteria- Performance requirements and essential conditions that have to be achieved before project deliverables are accepted. |
| Accountability - The responsibility of program managers and staff to provide evidence to stakeholders and funding agencies that a program is effective and in conformance with its coverage, service, legal, and fiscal requirements. |
| Acquisition - On this site, the term is used to indicate the full life of a system from initial concept and planning, through development and maintenance and operations (M&O) and continuing until the system is retired or shut down. |
| Acquisition Life Cycle - The standard process used by the acquisition organization for defining how a system will be acquired and maintained from inception to retirement. For OSI, the Acquisition Life Cycle includes the following phases: Planning, Contracting, and Product Implementation and Acceptance. |
| Action Item Management - Identification, analysis, tracking and resolution of specific defined tasks (usually related to project management concerns). Action Item tracking sometimes is a subset of Issue Management. |
| Activity - A collection of business tasks typically executed in a sequential fashion in order to achieve intermediate results. |
| Activity Analysis - The analysis and measurement of units of work or tasks that define a process. Measurement can be in terms of time, cost, or output. |
| Activity Definition - Identification of specific activities that must be performed to produce the project deliverables. Also called activity description. |
| Activity Description (AD) - A short phrase or label used in a project network diagram. The activity description normally describes the scope of work of the activity. See also activity definition. |
| Administrative Expense - Expense that cannot be easily identified with a specific function or project but contributes in some way to the project or general business operations. |
| Agency - OSI's parent organization is the California Health and Human Services Agency. |
| Alternatives - A number of different solutions and approaches that must be evaluated and chosen to attain the objectives of a project. |
| Alternatives Analysis - Process of breaking down a complex situation to generate different solutions and approaches and evaluate the impact of trade-offs to attain objectives. |
| Alternative Procurement - According to the State Contracting Manual, Vol 3, Section 3.B6.0, standard acquisition approaches are appropriate for most acquisition. Some business problems, however, offer unique challenges where the use of different procurement techniques, within a competitive framework, may better meet the State's needs. In such cases, a request to conduct an alternative procurement within the ITPP should be submitted to the DGS/PD. See SAM 4819.31. Due to the complexity of Alternative Procurements, only the DGS/PD has the authority to conduct such procurements. |
| American National Standards Institute (ANSI) - Voluntary organization that helps set standards and also represents the United States in the International Standards Organization (ISO). |
| Analysis - (1) Study and examination of something complex by separating it into more simple component. Typically, includes discovering the parts of the thing being studied, how they fit together, and why they are arranged in a particular way. (2) Study of variances for cause, impact, corrective action, and results. |
| Approach - Overall method by which project objectives will be realized, including methodologies, life cycles, responsibilities, and other associated strategies, tactics, practices, and procedures. |
| Approach Statement - A high-level description of how the project will accomplish its goals and objectives. |
| Architecture Framework - A combination of structured processes, templates, and governance that facilitate the documentation of a architecture in a systematic manner. |
| As-Is - Also known as "current". A model of the current structure (process, data, applications, technology). The baseline used for measuring the success of future changes or improvements. |
| Attribute - A characteristic of an Entity whose value may be used to help distinguish one instance of an Entity from other instances of the same Entity. For example, an Attribute of a “Person” Entity may be “Social Security Number (SSN)”. An SSN is used to distinguish one person (i.e. one instance of a “Person” Entity) from another. |
| Audit Trail - Record of documentation describing actions taken, decisions made, and funds expended and earned on a project. Used to reconstruct the project after the fact for lessons learned and other purposes. |
| Avoidance - Risk response strategy that eliminates the threat of a specific risk event, usually by eliminating its potential cause. The project management team can never eliminate all risk, but certain risk events often can be eliminated. |
