It was a wonderful experience working on this book. I have worked in project management a long time and there are still tools and techniques I needed to research. It is so great to always have new things to learn!

I was fortunate to have Richard Avery as my technical editor. His input helped make this book more approachable. His technical and interpersonal skills are among the best. Richard, I appreciate your feedback and more importantly, your friendship.

My passion for project management was only heightened by working with my team members on the PMBOK^® Guide – Sixth Edition. My vice chair, David Hillson, helped me with many of the quantitative risk techniques in this book. I have brought my perspective to them, so for any risk gurus out there, any errors are on me, not David.

Larkland Brown and Guy Schleffer helped me with the Agile forms. They are masters at working in both the traditional and Agile worlds. Lovely Lynda Bourne is the go-to person for anything having to do with Stakeholder Engagement. I always appreciate her generous input and support.

Mercedes, Alejandro, Pan, Gwen, Mike, Kristin, and Roberta—your voices are always in the back of my mind when I write. Thank you for a wonderful experience in developing the Sixth Edition.

I so appreciate the support, friendship, and love from my husband, Dexter Dionisio. You make every day a joy.

The wonderful folks at Wiley are always a delight to work with. I feel so fortunate to have Margaret Cummins as an editor and a friend. Kalli Schultea, Lauren Freestone, Lauren Olesky, and Kerstin Nasdeo are wonderfully supportive. I am grateful for all you do.

I appreciate Donn Greenburg, Barbara Walsh, Amy Goretzky, and Roberta Storer for the work you all do to support this book and the other publications we work on together.

Thank you to all who purchase this book. I hope it brings clarity and understanding to the multiple tools and techniques we use to manage projects. May all your projects have a CPI of 1.0!

Audience

This book is written for practicing project managers, project management students, and for those studying for the Project Management Professional certification (PMP®). The book is meant to help clarify and explain some of the more common techniques we employ in project management. It also describes some of the more specialized techniques that are not used as often, but that can be very useful in certain situations.

If you are a practicing project manager you may find it useful to read up on specific techniques to get a deeper understanding of how to apply them. You may want to find out more about a whole category of techniques, such as data representation or estimating.

If you are a student of project management you can use this book to help you understand techniques presented in class and how to apply them.

Professionals studying for the PMP will benefit by gaining an in-depth understanding of many of the techniques you will find on the exam.

What’s in This Book

There are more than 125 tools and techniques mentioned in the PMBOK^® Guide – Sixth Edition. Many of them are in one of these six groups:

• Data gathering
• Data analysis
• Data representation
• Communication skills
• Decision-making skills
• Interpersonal and team skills

This book uses some of the same categories, but not all. This book also adds a group of techniques we call Estimating. Techniques that are not in any category are put into a section called “Other.” You will see the following categories in this book:

• Data gathering
• Data analysis
• Data representation
• Estimating
• Interpersonal and team skills
• Other techniques

You will not see all the 125+ techniques that are in the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide) described in this book. Some of the techniques are just too vague to describe, such as expert judgment, quality improvement methods, or meetings. Some techniques are so descriptive that you don’t really need anyone to explain them, such as ground rules, financing, or feedback. Some techniques are not included because they are general management techniques, for which volumes have already been written, for example, leadership, negotiation, and team building.

What you will find in this book is a description of 57 techniques that are used in managing projects. Some of them are used on almost every project, such as analogous estimating and rolling-wave planning. Others are more specialized, such as what-if analysis and the to-complete performance index. The techniques in this book are focused on predictive life cycles; in other words, we did not include Agile or adaptive techniques. This decision was made based on surveying potential users who rated the Agile techniques as low value, because Agile techniques are best described in a book that is dedicated to the topic of Agile.

Structure

Each section starts out with an introduction. The techniques are then presented in alphabetical order. They are not shown in the order you would build on to learn about them. For example, to learn about scheduling you would probably read in this sequence:

1. Precedence diagramming method (Section 6.6)
2. Leads and lags (Section 6.5)
3. Some, or all, of the duration estimating methods (Sections 4.1, 4.2, 4.5, and 4.7)
4. Critical path method (Section 6.2)
5. Resource optimization (Section 6.9)
6. Schedule compression (Section 6.11)

However, we needed to have a consistent way to present information, and alphabetically seemed like the best option, given the different people who will buy this book.

Each technique starts with a description of what it is. Following this are step-by-step instructions on how to use the technique. After the instructions you will see an example of how it can be used. There is some additional information, and then a listing of where you will see the technique used in the PMBOK^® Guide.

The examples are all based around one of eight scenarios. There is an appendix in the back of the book that provides a brief overview of each scenario. The scenarios are:

• Constructing a childcare center
• Meeting company growth needs
• Developing an exam preparation video
• Developing an intranet website
• Improving the process for an IT Help Desk
• Putting in a new backyard
• Expanding a PMO information system
• Constructing a community medical center

Some of the scenarios reference previous techniques, especially those that explain earned value techniques. You don’t have to read them in order, but if you are new to the technique, the previous sections are useful to help you understand the background information.

Every technique presented in this book can and should be tailored to your specific project, in your specific environment, and your specific organization. No two projects are alike. Use your experience to help you tailor the approach and the techniques to meet your needs.

For Lecture Slides of the Tools and Techniques, go to http://www.wiley.com/go/pmtools.

Good luck and may all your variances be positive!

Data gathering is often the first technique we employ in a process. Before we can transform process inputs into outputs we often need to gather additional information. In this context, an input is any document, information, or other item that is needed to conduct a process. An output is any document, information, product, or other item that is the result of a process.

Some of the data gathering techniques entail collecting data from individuals or groups, such as focus groups and brainstorming. Some techniques entail collecting information by using tools such as checklists and check sheets. Benchmarking and statistical sampling collect data from procedures that have been performed many, many times by multiple people or even machines.

The techniques described in this section include:

• Benchmarking
• Brainstorming
• Check sheets
• Checklists
• Focus groups
• Statistical sampling

There are other data gathering techniques that are not described in this book because they are either not project specific, or they are in common use. For example, interviewing people, reviewing lessons learned and information from previous projects, and developing questionnaires and surveys are common techniques that are not applied in projects any differently than they would be in any other field. They are common enough that they don’t require further explanation or examples to clarify how they are employed.

As with all techniques, you can use multiple methods to gather data. Use the methods that are easiest to gather the most complete and accurate information you need for your project.

WHAT IT IS

Benchmarking is gathering data on the best in class, best in industry, or best in organization practices, processes, and products. The information is used as a target to improve processes, products, and results. Benchmarking is most often used in projects to collect requirements, establish quality metrics, establish cost and schedule targets, and establish stakeholder (especially customer) satisfaction targets.

HOW TO USE IT

Use the steps below as a guideline. Tailor the steps as necessary to work within your environment.

1. Identify the process or metric that you want to improve. If you are developing a new product or improving an existing one, identify the aspect of the product you are gathering data about.
2. If you are using benchmarks for improving performance, take a baseline measurement of your current performance.
3. Identify areas in your own company, leaders in the industry, or leaders in other industries with similar processes. These are your “targets” to measure against. You may need to talk with industry peers, consultants, vendors, associations, or other resources to help you discover the industry leaders (targets).
4. Depending on who and where your target is, and what you are benchmarking, you may be able to easily identify the best practices, such as when you are using a target that is internal to your organization. If the target is external, or even a competitor, you may need to gather business intelligence, work with a consultant, or find some other way to determine how they achieve their performance.

This is where the data gathering aspect of benchmarking stops. If you are working on a process improvement project that is built around achieving the benchmarks, you would develop a plan to implement a process that would help you reach the benchmark. If you are using the information for collecting requirements, the benchmark will provide information that will be prioritized along with other requirements.

Throughout the project, you can track how you are doing against the benchmark, especially if it is an easily measurable metric, such as cost per unit, time to produce, or quality defects.

The satisfaction data shows only 62 percent of the people rate their experience in calling the Help Desk as a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 to 5. You notice the security department has the highest satisfaction: 93 percent rate their experience as a 4 or 5 when calling the security hotline. You decide to use the security hotline as the benchmark for helping to improve the IT Help Desk practices.

WHAT IT IS

Brainstorming is used as a technique for generating ideas and options and solving problems. It is generally a group activity that has a facilitator to manage the process. Brainstorming focuses on generating quantity, with the assumption that having a good quantity of ideas will lead to having a good-quality outcome. In the brainstorming session there is no criticism, all ideas are equal, and all are welcome, including those that seem like they are wild ideas. Various techniques can then be used to evaluate ideas gathered in order to help identify viable alternatives. Often during the process ideas will build on each other and the synergy of the group will produce better results than one person, alone, could come up with.

HOW TO USE IT

Use the steps below as a guideline. Tailor the steps as necessary to work within your environment or to work with the brainstorming variation you choose.

1. Identify the problem, goal, or outcome for the brainstorming session.
2. All members of the group state their ideas.
3. Record all ideas.

If time allows, the ideas can be elaborated, analyzed, or prioritized.

WHAT IT IS

A check sheet is a tally sheet that is used to collect data. It can be used to collect data about defects or to keep track of completing steps in a process.

HOW TO USE IT

Use the steps below as a guideline. Tailor the steps as necessary to work within your environment.

1. Identify the types of defects (or other variables) you are looking to tally and enter these in Column 1 of a spreadsheet. You would start this in cell A2 and continue with A3, A4, and so on.
2. The top row can indicate either frequency (enter “Frequency” in cell B1) or, if you are tracking locations or days of the week, hours of the day, or some other variable, enter each of these in the top row starting with cell B2. Follow with B3, B4, and so on.
3. Observe the process, outputs, or deliverables.
4. Indicate the source of the defect and put a mark in the appropriate cell.
5. Tally the rows and columns.

WHAT IT IS

A checklist is a list of activities, steps, or procedures that need to be done. It is often used as a reminder.

HOW TO USE IT

In projects, checklists are used to reduce or eliminate risks or defects. They contain a series of steps that must be taken, or processes that must be completed.

WHAT IT IS

A focus group is a group of prequalified people who are brought together to provide information about a product, service, or result. A professional moderator uses a question guide to focus the direction of the questions. The moderator also observes behaviors and nonverbal cues and records them in her observations.

HOW TO USE IT

Focus groups are most commonly used for new product or new service development. They may be part of a market research campaign to gather requirements or to provide insight into customer opinions, expectations, desired benefits, underlying assumptions, common views, and so forth.

1. Establish your goals or desired outcomes for the focus group.
2. Develop a discussion guide that provides a focus for the group, but also allows some open conversations that are not driven by the moderator.
3. Find a qualified moderator. You may want to hire a professional moderator to lead the group. Your moderator should have at least these qualifications:
   1. The ability to be friendly, nonjudgmental, flexible, and open. He or she needs to stay on topic, ask open-ended questions, and manage the conversation so it is productive and not combative.
   2. He or she should have some understanding of the new product or service, but not have a vested interest in the outcomes.
4. Determine how to record the session, either with video, audio, or a note-taker.
5. Set up the meeting logistics such as time, location, date, and duration.
6. Identify and invite the participants. Ideally you want a cross section of potential end users and customers.
7. At the opening of the meeting:
   1. Thank participants for attending.
   2. Review the purpose of the meeting.
   3. Review the flow of the meeting, guidelines, ground rules for participation, and so forth.
8. During the meeting:
   1. Ask open-ended questions to start a topic; use closed-ended questions to gain clarity.
   2. Make sure everyone is participating. You may need to call on some people to get their feedback.
   3. Summarize information, rephrase questions if necessary, employ active listening, and ask for comments about responses.
   4. Ask if there are any other comments or thoughts before moving on, and before wrapping up the meeting.
   5. Thank the participants for coming.
9. Assess the data and look for patterns, themes, unexpected outcomes, and new questions that may have arisen.