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Glossary of Terms

To help you get the most out of MSP Planner, we've defined the key professional scheduling terms used throughout the application and documentation.

A​

  • Actuals: The real amount of work posted in Jira worklogs, used to compare planned effort against actual execution.
  • Assignment: The link between a task and a resource, including the amount of time (Units) the resource is dedicated to that task.

B​

  • Baseline: A saved snapshot of a schedule's start and finish dates, used as a point of reference to track project drift.
  • Bottom Pane: The resource view where capacity and allocations are managed.

C​

  • Capacity: The total available working hours of a resource over a specific period, determined by their calendar and max units.
  • Critical Path: The longest sequence of dependent tasks that determines the minimum possible project finish date.

D​

  • Dependency: A logical link between two tasks that defines the order in which they must be performed (e.g., Finish-to-Start).
  • Duration: The total elapsed time between the start and finish of a task.

F​

  • Float (Slack): The amount of time a non-critical task can be delayed without impacting the project's overall finish date.
  • Fixed Duration: A scheduling mode where the duration is constant, and adding resources reduces the required work per person.

H​

  • Hybrid Schedule: A schedule containing both Jira-linked tasks and "schedule-only" tasks/milestones.

I​

  • Identity Preservation: The technology that ensures tasks and resources maintain their IDs when exported to and imported from MS Project.

M​

  • Milestone: A task with zero duration that represents a key project achievement.

R​

  • Round-Trip: The process of exporting a schedule to MS Project, having it edited externally, and importing it back into Jira.

S​

  • Scheduling Mode: The rule (Fixed Work, Duration, or Units) that defines how the engine recalculates timing when a variable changes.
  • Split-Pane: The dual-view workspace featuring the Timeline (Top) and Resource View (Bottom).

T​

  • Timeline: The professional planning layer where schedules are modeled, calculated, and visualized.