Planning tools, templates and guidelines

January 5, 2014

PMBOK Process Groups Knowledge Areas, Processes, Tools and techniques

Project management tools and techniques enable project managers and teams to undertake project activities.

PMBOK tools and techniques

Expert judgement

Expert judgement refers to anyone with specialised knowledge and/or experience relevant to the objectives who is able to provide advice and guidance to the project manager and team. Sources may include:

  • topic/subject/product experts within the organisation
  • consultants
  • stakeholders, including clients/customers
  • professional and trade associations
  • industry groups.

Collecting requirements

Scoping Tools and Techniques

Interviews

Interviews are any formal or informal interaction technique involving questions

Focus groups

Focus groups are moderated discussions with a group of people, centered on well defined subjects

Facilitated workshops

Facilitated workshops enable interactive discussions with participants, and are usually conducted informally to encourage an open dialogue

Group creativity techniques

These techniques encourage lateral thinking for creative problem-solving or identifying innovative solutions. They include brainstorming, idea and mind mapping, affinity diagrams, and nominal group technique

Group decision making techniques

These are group techniques for reaching a decision. Methods for reaching a group decision include:

  • Unanimity – everyone agree on one course of action
  • Majority – support from at least 50% of group
  • Plurality – even if no majority, the largest block in a group decides
  • Dictatorship – one makes the decision for the group

Questionnaires and surveys

These written set of questions are designed to collect responses from a group of people. These are useful for obtaining a large number of results relatively quickly

Observations

Observations, such as viewing how a process is performed, are useful for defining and measuring existing processes, identifying improvements, and collecting requirements

 Prototypes

Prototypes are models or designs of a product provide an example of a concept or idea for others to feedback Drezinex