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122 PROJECTMANAGEMENTTECHNIQUESTable 4(Contintued)KNOWLEDGE AREA/CATEGORY TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
Communications Management Stakeholder analysis
Communications management plan
Conflict management
Communications media selection
Communications infrastructure
Status reports
Meetings
Virtual communications
Templates
Project Web sites
Procurement Management Make or buy analysis
Contracts
Requests for proposals or quotes
Source selection
Negotiating
E-procurement
Risk Management Risk management plan
Probability impact matrix
Risk ranking
Monte Carlo simulation
Top-Ten Risk Item TrackingCONCLUSION
Despite all the uncertainty in the world, one can be cer-
tain that there will continue to be a need for projects and
better ways to manage them. Many organizations have
improved project success rates by applying some stan-
dard project management processes and using appropri-
ate tools and techniques. This chapter summarizes a few
of the common tools and techniques used in project man-
agement. Because every project is unique, project man-
agers and their teams must have a good understanding of
what tools and techniques are available before they can
make the more difficult decisions of which ones to use on
their projects and how to implement them.ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Figures, tables, and most of the text in this article are taken
from the author’s text,Information Technology Project
Management,(2nd ed.). Boston: Course Technology, 2002.
They are reprinted here with permission of the publisher.GLOSSARY
Activity or task An element of work, normally found on
the work breakdown structure, that has an expected
duration, cost, and resource requirements.
Baseline The original project plan plus approved
changes.
Crashing A technique for making cost and schedule
trade-offs to obtain the greatest amount of schedule
compression for the least incremental cost.
Critical chain scheduling A method of scheduling thattakes limited resources into account when creating a
project schedule and includes buffers to protect the
project completion date.
Critical path The series of activities that determines the
earliest time by which the project can be completed.
Earned value management A project performance me-
asurement technique that integrates scope, time, and
cost data.
Fast tracking Compressing a schedule by doing activi-
ties in parallel that you would normally do in sequence
or in slightly overlapping time frames.
Gantt chart A standard format for displaying project
schedule information by listing project activities and
their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar
format.
Knowledge areas Topics that describe key competen-
cies project managers must develop to manage projects
effectively. (The nine knowledge areas in project man-
agement are project integration, scope, time, cost,
quality, human resource, communications, risk, and
procurement management.)
Milestone A significant event on a project with zero du-
ration.
Organizational breakdown structure A structure that
describes the people responsible for performing project
work.
Program evaluation review technique A network
analysis technique used to estimate project duration
when there is a high degree of uncertainty about the
individual activity duration estimates.
Project charter A document that formally recognizes
the existence of a project and provides direction on the
project’s objectives and management.