9 Useful Project Management Planning Tools and Techniques

A project is an undertaking of a well-defined task or a group of tasks in order to achieve an objective with clearly defined business case. To manage and plan a successful project a project manager can take the help of well-established tools for planning, evaluating, managing and controlling the various aspects of his project. This hub will give you a list of nine important project management tools that will help you to design your project, which has been designed and tested with the best practices of the project management domain.

1.Brain storming: this is one of the most innovative ways to find the best solution to complete a project approaches and plans. When you want to complete a project that is both challenging and has the characteristic of unpredictability, which means a very few similar projects has been undertaken, brain storming is the tool you can consider to reach a decision whether it is related to project tasks or even a business case. In brain storming a group of people -stakeholders, team members, customers- will meet in a room and discuss various clearly defined aspects of the project. For analysis the output of the meeting, you will need to have someone who can keep all the meeting details and highlight the important outcomes of that discussion. Any member in a brain storming group can propose any relevant idea and all the members should have open mind and should not criticize the ideas proposed by the others.

2. Nominal group technique: it is an effective and quick way to reach a decision.In NVT, a group of people take part in a discussion to give their opinion with relevant explanation to give a solution to a specific problem. At the end of the discussion every member gives their votes and all the solutions are ranked as per their relevancy and effectiveness to solve that particular problem. The highest ranked solution is the final outcome of NGT. This method of decision making is effective to select an appropriate approach to a project.

3. Force field analysis: this project management technique is used to support the pros and cons of a decision. Normally, all the positive sides of a particular decision are weighted. The weak points or the points that reduce the value of a decision are minimized by adding counter measures to support the decision. At first you define your project goal or any decision, and then list all the strong and weak points to reach that goal. Next, you need to score each point on a scale from 0 to 5: ‘0’ means the solution is weak and the ‘5’ means the point you made is strong. You can make this force field analysis chart in an Excel sheet or can download a free worksheet from Internet. This type of analysis is very easy and can be used in any phases or in any level of project management.

4. Multivoting: though this technique is also known as NGT voting, but it is rather a tool to evaluate the decision made in a NGT session in order to select the best idea or solution for your project. You can also use this project tool with brain storming session.

5. PERT/CPM: this tool helps to create project schedules and relates the activities in a project so as you can complete your project within the time constraints specified by the project management executives.

The other important project management tools that you can use are:

6.Network analysis

7.Crashing

8.Affinity diagram

9.PDPC chart

All the mentioned project management tools are vital but these are not all that you need to complete and manage a successful project. Remember that tools are used only to increase the efficiency of a project and it can never replace your power of judgment to reach a decision to solve a critical problem, which only comes through experience and continuous study to learn the best practices in project management.