10 PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

This is a well-known fact these days that Project Management is the backbone of the project. Be its planning of resources, be its effort and cost estimation, be it anything related to the project, efficient Project Management is the most important and crucial factor in the success of the project. Experts say it takes almost 10-12% effort of the total project effort in Management.
Project Management is not as simple as it seems to be. It feels good to project Manager of any project but when it comes to actual execution, he/she is the one who takes the most pressure. In order to have a smooth path for the project, there are a lot of tools and techniques in the market which can not only make the Project Manager’s life easy but can lead to a systematic and controlled execution throughout the project.
In the article, we will discuss the most common tools and techniques being used by successful leaders. We will talk about the techniques first followed by the Tool:

Techniques

1. Brainstorming

   This is the most common technique used at the very early stage of everything. This is basically having an open discussion with all stakeholders involved and narrowing it down to a specific path. This is the easiest way to start a new activity or decision-making process.

2. Critical path (Flow diagram)

   This technique helps a Manager to get the quickest and the slowest timelines of the project. In this, all the major milestones act as intermediate destinations that create a path from the start to the end of the project. Then with the help of proper stakeholders, Manager concludes a set of mandatory destinations for the project, and a way leading through Mandatory destinations is called a critical path. This gives Managers the flexibility of delay for the destinations that are not on the critical path.

3. Fish Bone analysis

   This technique helps a Manager to find out the root cause of any problem in the early stages of the project. This is basically a Cause and Impact and helps to find out anything that can make a big impact on the project and the possible cause of the activity. So basically it helps in writing down risks in the project.

4. Lesson Learned

   This is the most common technique used by Managers to document the findings from a completed project and use the same in the upcoming similar project in the future. Lessons learned can be documented through various project closure meetings. feedback sessions, Feedback surveys. This is a very important and essential technique to be used in every project.

5. Variance report

   This is another very important technique being used by Managers during the execution of a project and in order to have better control and governance of the project. Managers document the actual effort and cost being used in the project against the planned. This helps higher management to have an overview of the consistency in the project as well as confidence in having good governance.

6. Project Charter

   This technique is used to initialize any project. The project charter is a document that contains all the relative information about the project requirement, stakeholders, and tentative timelines. This is generally a one-page document that acts as input to the actual scope document.

7. Gantt Chart

   This is the most important technique that a project manager uses throughout the project. Gantt chart is basically a timeline of the complete project and details on the milestones or destinations. The project Manager often uses a Gantt chart to showcase the whole project to management instead of the detailed project plan.

Project Management tools

1. Microsoft Project

   This is one of the most widely used project management tools across the globe. A very handy tool that provides almost everything from planning to execution out of the box. Excellent tool for a beginner. It provides a very interactive user interface that seems like a simple Excel sheet to use and does many things automatically for the Manager. If you want to track the overall project in a very simple and easy way, this is the tool for you.
   Product Vendor: Microsoft
   License: Paid /per installation or Bulk
   Application Use: Desktop Based application
   
   Features:
   
   1. Complete project Plan
   2. Resource Detail and dependency
   3. Ability to trace the relation and dependency of tasks on other tasks.
   4. Out of the box Gantt chart
   5. A number of reports are to be used.

2. Gantt Project

   This is just a smaller version of MS Project and is often reviewed and compared by a user across the world. Like MS project, it is also an interactive tool but the person using this must have good knowledge of Project Management. It mainly focuses on PERT and Gantt charts.
   Product Vendor: Open source
   License: Free
   Application Use: Desktop-Based Application
   
   Features:
   1. Gantt. PERT Charts
   2. A number of reports are to be used in pdf and Word format

3. Project Place

   This is a cloud-based tool and is being used by a number of organizations across the globe. This is a very interactive and detailed planning and execution tool and a complete project Management solution. Using Project Place one can track to smallest possible activity with resources attached, the status of the activity, execution dates, effort spent, and much more. Project place acts as a single repository for project planning and document handling. Issue tracker, Meeting notes, meeting scheduling, and much more. The whole plan can be divided into the board (phases) and can further be divided into cards (tasks) that can be assigned to respective resources. One of the best project management tools if used to its fullest capabilities.
   Product Vendor: Project place International
   License: Paid /per user
   Application Use: Cloud (web-based)
   
   Features:
   1. Complete project Plan
   2. Resource Detail and dependency
   3. Ability to trace the relation and dependency of tasks on other tasks.
   4. Always live and actual status of the project. No need to put anything in any report.
   5. Tracking to activity level
   6. A single place for all project-related documents
   7. Out-of-box meeting scheduler and Minutes of Meeting holder.
   8. Issue tracking and reporting facility.
   9. Out-of-the-box resource level report for the workload.