Project Management Tools

Project Management Tools and Techniques Owen Stephens Royal Holloway, University of London

Tools can help:
Defining the project plan & tasks
Monitoring & evaluating progress
Managing budgets (money & time)
Risk analysis
Communication and Collaboration

Project Plan: Tasks
Task attributes
What? Who? How long? How much?
Success criteria?
Dependencies
What must be done before something else can start?
What can be done in parallel?
Calendar
When is everyone involved available?

Project Plan: Deliverables
Overall objectives of the project
Objectives for every task
“ How will we know when this task (or the whole project) has been completed? …to what standard of quality?”
‘ Milestones’ in the project

Divide and Rule
Break down a BIG TASK
… into several little tasks
each with objectives & deliverables
each with a budget
… maybe each one is made of smaller tasks
… until each task is so small, it’s easy!

Project Plan: Evaluation
How long (has it taken)?
How much (has it cost)?
How good (was it for you)?

Project Plan: Risks
Risk Log
Condition; Cause; Consequence
Probability
Impact
Communication

Project Plan: Risks
Acceptable vs Unacceptable risk
Contingency
Risk Management Plan

Tools
MS Project
Integrated tools
ProjectPlace.com
erooms
Project Controls Database
Mindmapping
Freemind
ConceptDraw

Computer-based tools
Useful when a project is large or complex enough
Automatically calculate:
dates & costs
Estimated vs Actual costs & times
Critical path
Produce nice charts & reports
(if it looks that good, its got to work)

Gantt chart (from Microsoft Project)

Never let a good tool get in the way of a successful project

Communication and Collaboration
Meetings
Voice and video-conferencing (Skype, MSN, NetMeeting)
Reports, newsletters
Email
Websites (Wikis, Blogs)

References
JISCinfoNet – Project Planning
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/InfoKits/project-management/index_html
JISCinfoNet – Risk Management
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/InfoKits/risk-management
Nick Obolensky, (from) “Practical Business re-engineering – tools and technique for effective change”
http://www.vthdimension.com/project.pdf
Martin E. Modell, (from) “A Professional's Guide to Systems Analysis”
http://studentweb.tulane.edu/~mtruill/dev-pert.html
John Paschoud, “Techniques & Tools for Project Management” presentation

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Project Management Tools

by ostephens on Sep 17, 2009

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Project Management Tools — Presentation Transcript