Tools & Techniques Descriptions (1 of Each) Flashcards
Acquisition
The project management team may need to hire new staff or sub-contract work on the project, if required resources are not available in-house.
Used in:
- Acquire Project Team
Additional Quality Planning Tools
These include Brainstorming, Force field analysis, Nominal group techniques, and other quality management and control tools such as Affinity diagrams, PDPC, Tree diagrams, Matrix diagrams, Prioritization matrices, etc.
Used in:
- Plan Quality Management
Advertising
Advertisements in newspapers or speciality trade publications can be used to invite more sellers. Sometimes such advertisements are mandated for government contracts.
Used in:
- Conduct Procurements
Alternatives Analysis
Alternative ways to accomplish an activity. For example, two less experienced resources could be used to accomplish a task instead of an experienced resource. An activity could be automated by using a tool instead of being performed manually, in order to expedite work. Some components could be purchased instead of being manufactured in-house.
Alternatives Generation
A technique to identify different approaches to perform the work of the project. Brainstorming and Lateral Thinking are commonly used to identify alternatives.
Used as a T&T in:
- Define Scope
Analogous Estimating
An estimating technique that uses information from a previous, similar activity as the basis for estimating a future activity. For example, a similar project done in the past took 5 months to complete. so, the current project, which is slightly more complex, should take about 6 months.
Used in:
- Estimate Activity Durations
- Estimate Costs
Analytical Techniques
Various techniques such as rolling wave planning, leads and lags, alternative analysis, and methods for reviewing schedule performance may be employed. Techniques such as payback period, return on investment, internal rate of return, discounted cash flow, and net present value, may be used for making funding decisions (self-funding, funding with equity, or funding with debt) and financing project resources (making, purchasing, renting, or leasing).
Used in:
- Plan Schedule Management
- Plan Cost Management
- Plan Risk Management
- Plan Stakeholder Management
- Conduct Procurements
- Monitor & Control Project Work
- Close Project or Phase
Approved Change Requests Review
All approved change requests are reviewed to ensure that they are implemented as approved, in a timely manner, and as per the standards defined. For example, if a change request was approved for a defect repair, then the Control Quality process verifies that the defect has been satisfactorily repaired.
Used in:
- Control Quality
Assumptions Analysis
The uncertainties and inaccuracies in assumptions can be a source of risk. Assumption analysis helps to identify risks associated with assumptions.
Someone said: “Assumption is the mother of all screw ups”.
Used in:
- Identify Risks
Benchmarking
Comparing the current project’s processes to those of other comparable projects (within or outside the organization) order to identify best practices, generate ideas for improvement, and provide a basis for measuring performance.
Used as a T&T in:
- Collect Requirements
- Plan Quality Management
Bidder Conferences
Meeting between the buyer and potential sellers to ensure that sellers have a clear and common understanding of the technical and contractual requirements, and all sellers are treated equal. Such meetings are conducted prior to submission of responses by the sellers. The procurement documents may be amended as a result of these meetings.
Used in:
- Conduct Procurements
Bottom-Up Estimating
An estimating technique in which complex activities are broken down into smaller and more manageable activities. Resource requirements are determined for these smaller activities and then aggregated or “rolled-up” to determine the resource requirements for the entire activity.
Used in:
- Estimate Activity Resources
- Estimate Costs
Change Control Tools
Manual or automated tools may be used for configuration and change management. These tools can help to manage change requests and communicate their status to the appropriate stakeholders.
Used in:
- Perform Integrated Change Control
Checklist Analysis
A checklist of common risks can be developed based on knowledge gained from previous similar projects. The lowest level of the Risk Breakdown Structure can also serve as a risk checklist.
Used in:
- Identify Risks
Claims Administration
A claim is a request, demand, or assertion of rights by a seller against a buyer, or vice versa, for consideration, compensation, or payment under the terms of a legally binding contract, such as for a disputed change. Claims are administered throughout the project. ADR can be used if parties cannot come to an agreement through mutual negotiations.
Used in:
- Control Procurements
Colocation
Co-location means placing team members together in the same physical location. Co-location infuses a sense of belonging and team spirit among team members, and hence increases effectiveness of the team. Co-location is also referred to as “tight matrix”.
Used in:
- Develop Project Team
Communication Methods
The three main categories of communication methods are:
- Interactive Communication - Ex) face-to-face meeting and teleconferences
- Push Communication - Ex) letters, reports, emails, and newsletters
- Pull Communication - Ex) blogs and websites
Used in:
- Plan Communication Management
- Manage Communications
- Manage Stakeholder Engagement
Communication Models
In voice of communication model should aim to reduce the noise and ensure effective communication.
Used in:
- Plan Communications Management
- Manage Communications
Communication Requirements Analysis
The communication requirements are analyzed to determine the information needs of the project stakeholders. Only that information should be communicated that contributes to project success, or where lack of communication can lead to project failure.
Used in:
- Plan Communications Management
Communication Technology
Various technologies can be used to transmit the information. Examples include meetings, teleconferences, webinars, formal letters or memos, faxes, rails, web sites, wikis, blogs, etc. The choice of method used should be appropriate for the project and the type of information that is being communicated.
Used in:
- Plan Communications Management
- Manage Communications
Conflict Management
Conflicts are inevitable in a project environment. Conflict management is an important skill that Project Managers should master. Major sources of conflict are schedule, cost, resource constraints, project priorities, personality differences, technical and administrative issues. Five conflict resolution techniques are:
- Withdrawing/ Avoid
- Smooth/ Accomodate
- Compromise / Reconcile
- Force / Direct
- Collaborate / Problem Solve
Used in:
- Manage Project Team
Context Diagrams
Help stakeholders visualize the product scope by showing the interaction between a business system (process, equipment, computer system, etc.), with people and other systems.
Used as a T&T in:
- Collect Requirements
Contingent Response Strategies
These strategies define the actions to be taken when a risk event (positive or negative) occurs. The risk triggers - symptoms or warning signs indicating that a risk has occurred or about to occur - are defined as well. Examples of risk triggers include a missed milestone, a competitor going bankrupt, drop in the price of a raw material.
Used in:
- Plan Risk Responses
Contract Change Control System
Contract Change Control System is used to manage changes to the contracts on the project, and is integrated with the project’s integrated change control system.
Used in:
- Control Procurements
Cost Aggregation
The individual cost estimates of activities in the WBS are aggregated to get the cost estimates by work package. Cost estimates by work packages are aggregated to get cost estimates by Control Account. Finally, cost estimates by Control Account are rolled up to determine the total project cost.
Used in:
-Determine Budget
Cost of Quality
The total cost of all quality related if forts throughout the product life cycle. It includes prevention and appraisal costs (cost of conformance), and failure costs (cost of non-conformatnce).
Used in:
- Estimate Costs
- Plan Quality Management
Cost-Benefit Analysis
It compares the cost of quality activities with the expected benefit. For example, if a quality improvement activity cots $10,000 and results in only a marginal increase in quality, then it’s probably not worth doing.
Used in:
- Plan Quality Management
Critical Chain Method
A schedule network analysis technique that modifies the project schedule to account for limited resources and project uncertainties. It is developed from the critical path method. The resource-constrained critical path is known as the critical chain.
Used in:
- Develop Schedule
Critical Path Method
A schedule network analysis technique used to determine the minimum project duration by analyzing the amount of float on various paths in the project schedule network.
Used in:
- Develop Schedule
Data Gathering & Representation Techniques
Data Gathering and Representation Techniques include:
- Interviewing - draw in from experience and knowledge of the stakeholders to quantify the probability and impact of risk on project objectives.
- Probability distributions - such distributions can be continuous or discrete, and represent the uncertainty in duration or cost estimates of the project.
Used in:
- Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis
Decomposition
Th technique of breaking down a very laager project into manageable components.
Used as a T&T in:
- Create WBS
- Define Activities
Dependency Determination
All types of dependencies - Mandatory, Discretionary, External, and Internal - meet to be considered when sequencing activities.
Design of Experiments
Is a statistical approach that helps to determine the factors that have the most impact on quality. Ex) Lets say a company wants to optimize its e-commerce portal to generate maximum revenue. One way is to change one element of the web site at a time, try it out for a week , and analyze its impact on revenue. A more efficient and faster way is to use DOE and change a combination of elements at the same time to determine the best layout. DOE is used during the
Plan Quality Management process to determine the number and type of tests to be used and their impact on cost of quality.
Used in:
- Plan Quality Management
Diagramming Techniques
Ishikawa (or Fishbone) diagrams, Flowcharts, and Influence diagrams are commonly used for risk identification.
Used in:
- Identify Risks
Document Analysis
Gathering requirements by analyzing business plans, marketing material, agreements, RFP, business rules, business processes, use cases, problem/issue logs, policies, procedures, and regulatory documentation.
Used as a T&T in:
- Collect Requirements
Document Reviews
A detailed review of all the documents listed as inputs of the Identify Risks process is performed in order to identify risks. These documents include cost, schedule and quality management plans, assumption log, procurement documents, reports, and project files from previous projects. Inconsistency in these document, may be an indicator of risks on the project.
Used in:
- Identify Risks
Earned Value Management (EVM)
A project management methodology that integrates scope, schedule and cost to measure project performance and progress in an objective manner.
PV = Planned Value EV = Earned Value AC = Actual Cost BAC = Budget at Completions EAC = Estimate at Completion ETC = Estimate to Complete VAC = Variance at Completion CV = Cost Variance SV = Schedule Variance CPI = Cost Performance Index SPI = Schedule Performance Index
Used in:
- Control Costs
Expert Judgment
Expertise which may come from individuals with experience, knowledge, skills, and/or training and can be from the company, consultants, PMO, SMEs, Industry Groups, etc. Technical and management expertise may be required in developing documents. Expert Judgment is a tool and technique for every Integration Process.
Used as a T&T in:
- Develop Project Charter
- Develop Project Management Plan
- Direct & Manage Project Work
- Monitor & Control Project Work
- Perform Integrated change Control
- Close Project or Phase
- Plan Scope Management
- Define Scope
- Create WBS
- Plan Schedule Management
- Define Activities
- Estimate Activity Resources
- Estimate Activity Durations
- Plan Cost Management
- Estimate Costs
- Determine Budget
- Plan HR Management
- Control Communications
- Plan Risk Management
- Identify Risks
- Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis
- Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis
- Plan Risk Responses
- Plan Procurement Management
- Conduct Procurements
- Identify Stakeholders
- Plan Stakeholder Management
- Control Stakeholder Engagement
Facilitated Workshops
Bring key stakeholders together for defining cross-functional requirements and reconciling stakeholder differences. Examples include Joint Application Development (JAD) in software development, Quality Functional Deployment (QFD) in manufacturing.
Used as a T&T in:
- Collect Requirements
- Define Scope
Facilitation Techniques
Brainstorming, conflict resolution, problem solving, and meeting management techniques.
Used as a T&T in:
- Develop Project Charter
- Develop Project Management Plan
Focus Groups
Meeting that bring together dry stakeholders and subject matter experts to learn about their expectations and attitudes about a proposed product, service, or result. They are conducted by trained moderators.
Used as a T&T in:
- Collect Requirements
Forecasting
Based on the current cost performance, an estimate of how much more budget is required to complete the remaining work on the project (ETC) and how much is the total project expected to cost when it gets completed (EAC).
Used in:
- Control Costs
Funding Limit Reconciliation
In this technique, the funding available in each time period (say each month) is compared with the planned expenditure in the time period to ensure that the planned expenditure is within the available funding. For example, if the planned expenditure in a given month is more than the funding available in that month, then the work in that month may have to be rescheduled to another month when more funds are available.
Used in:
- Determine Budget
Ground Rules
Ground rules establish clear expectations regarding acceptable behavior by project team members. Ground rules are very important in any professional setup.
Used in:
- Develop Project Team
Group Creativity Techniques
Used to collect project and product requirements via Brainstorming, Nominal Group Technique, Mind Mapping, Affinity Diagram, and Multi-criteria decision analysis.
Used as a T&T in:
- Collect Requirements
Group Decision-Making Techniques
Used to assess various alternatives. The objective is to classify and prioritize (low, medium, high) requirements. There are multiple methods of reaching a group decision, such as Unanimity, Majority, Plurality, and Dictatorship.
Used as a T&T in:
- Collect Requirements
- Validate Scope
- Estimate Activity Durations
- Estimate Costs
Historical Relationships
Knowledge gained from past experience can be translated into mathematical models to predict the total project cost. For example, cost for a construction project can be calculated by using cost per sq. ft. rather than using bottom-up estimating.
Used in:
- Determine Budget
Independent Estimates
Independent Estimates, prepared by the buyer or an expert on behalf of the buyer, can be used as a benchmark for evaluating proposals. Significant differences in cost estimates may indicate that the procurement SOW is not clear, or the sellers have misunderstood or incorrectly estimated the work.
Used in:
- Conduct Procurements