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Writer's pictureEsmeal Sheriff

Common Project Tools I have Used

Updated: Jan 9, 2023

Some professionals may wonder if the concepts described in the project management methodologies are truly applicable or if it's just a fancy description of how things should be done, but never really done in such a manner. The concepts of project management are quite different from the concepts of functional activities, even though they interface with each other. In my previous Blog Project Management VS. Business Operations, I explained how these two activities are different from each other though they both greatly contribute to the organization business goals and objectives. For the concepts of project management to be effectively applied, there must be a set of tools that can facilitate all the project activities. These activities exist anywhere from the start of the project to the end. These activities would include decomposing the scope, developing timelines and budget estimates, identifying and managing risks, tracking milestones, tracking issues, tracking change orders, procuring materials, collecting deliverables, developing reports, etc. All these activities performed on a project will need a tool for the project results to be met.


I define TOOL in this regard as a collective of software or applications designed to aid the project team in performing their duties and delivering the project results according to plan. Some organizations may have their own resources to develop these tools in-house, while some organizations purchase software licenses and train their team on how to utilize it to manage their projects. There may be several other reasons why these tools are necessary, but as for me, I see it as being more efficient in delivering the project goals. The highest risk of any project is the financial investment that goes into it, whether the cost is to the customer or to the project team. If the project results are not delivered as expected, there could be a financial impact and, in many cases, nobody wants to deal with it. So, it is imperative that a project team is aware and able to identify the appropriate tools that are necessary to facilitate their project activities to deliver the goals.


In this Blog, I will describe for you some of the common tools I have used to apply various project management concepts during project planning and implementations. Most of these tools that I am about to describe, which I have used on projects, have either been developed by me or data(s) generated by me, in collaboration with my project team.


Microsoft Project

I was first introduced to this software during my undergraduate studies in 2014 when I was taking my very first project management class. We use this primarily for developing the project schedule, estimating the cost, assigning resources, and establishing the project baselines. These activities are done mainly during the planning phase of the project. To make this possible, the project should already have a defined scope and in some cases, it would be great to have the Work Breakdown Structure which I will explain in detail as well. There are so many benefits that come with using Microsoft Project. Even during the execution and monitoring phase of the project, this tool helps to manage the critical path, calculate percentage of work completed and percentage of work needed to be completed, compare actual efforts to planned efforts, compare actual cost to planned cost, identify and manage variances, manage dependencies, and generate reports. Over the years, most companies I have worked for did not implement the use of Microsoft Project probably because it did not align with their PMO strategies or team members were not trained to use it. But in most projects that I have done outside of regular work activities, such as school, case studies, personal and community projects, I use this tool quite effectively.


Some of the benefits using this tool is that it provides many views that the project team could use to understand what is happening in the project. Some of these views include resources usage, network diagram which shows the inter-relationships among activities, dashboard which shows work overview, graphs and many other reports that could be generated during a project. Another benefit is that data from this tool can be exported to an excel spreadsheet or shared with other team members for transparency. For this tool to be utilized effectively, the organization should hire people with the knowledge or train their project team on how the various features of the software apply to ensure the maximum benefits towards their projects.


Kanban Board

I implemented my very first Kanban Board in 2018 when I was working as a Project Coordinator at a Custom Designs and Architectural Lighting Manufacturing Company in Massachusetts. Part of my duties were to receive and track customer shop drawing through the engineering, review, and approval process before going to production. When you are working on 30 plus projects with different scopes and multiple design requirements and they are all in different stages of the engineering designs, it is easy for things to get lost in the shuffle. Moreover, the turnaround time for revising the drawings was two days for our engineering department. For customer review and feedback, there were no time constraints even though many times, we pushed for feedback as quickly as we could. While sitting in the office with my Project Manager trying to figure out how to coordinate our shop drawings, I took the dry erase marker and began to draw a column table on the white board. I use the project number as my unique identifier. Since I could not possibly write all the 30 projects assigned to me on the white board, I prioritized ten projects at a time based on what shop drawings that were sent to engineering initially. This first stage was called “Sent to Engineering”.


Usually, the initial drawing is completed and sent to the customer for review and feedback. In this stage, the customer will review the drawing and make notations on where needed to be modified. These modifications could be dimensions, height, length or width, metal types, shade types, glass types, acrylics and so on based on the designer's motive. The initial drawing always comes back with multiple notations because engineers are still trying to figure out the customer’s requirements. This second column would be the “First Customer Revision” stage. The third column was called “Revise and Resubmit”. In this stage, the engineering department received the initial feedback from the designer with much more details to work with. This also gives us the opportunity to provide samples of various finishes for review and testing by the designer or the customer. “Revise and Resubmit” can be a long process as designers tend to change many things as well as add some new features to the product. Sometimes we had to develop a prototype for the customer’s review. We go back and forth with engineering to ensure the designer’s motive is met before moving to the next column which is the “Approve” stage. This fourth stage means the design has met the customer’s requirements.


The next stage from here is having the engineering package the final drawing files for production. Once the information is sent to production, that gets removed from the board. As projects move through these stages, additional projects get added to the “Sent to Engineering” column and the same process continues through the other stages. This process increases our efficiency by a huge percentage. The benefit of this tool is that it gives us a visualization of shop drawings moving through the design, review, and approval process, reduces backlogs and work in progress, and helps the team to maximize our efforts. This tool is relevant when a certain project activity moves through the same stages consistently. Some companies may have technology feasibility to building their own Kanban Board or there may be some software out there that provides the features of a Kanban board. However, to fully effect this tool, the team must know and understand their project management process flow including the assumptions and constraints they are faced with.


RACI/RAM Chart

This stands for Responsibility, Accountability, Consult, and Inform. It is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix that includes all activities and participants, both internal and external to the project. The primary purpose of this tool is to identify critical and noncritical activities and assign various participants to play various roles in completing the tasks as well as helping the team make key decisions. I have used this tool on multiple projects as I find the need to keep the team in alignment with responsibilities and authorities vested in the project success.


Take for instance, a well-known nonprofit organization is embarking on a new project to raise awareness in the community as they prepare for their annual fundraiser event. A project manager is assigned to the project, and he/she is held Accountable for delivering the expectations. The project manager negotiates for team members from different departments to build his/her project team. One of the requirements is to engage radio stations to run advertisements, engage TV stations for an interview segment of one the marketing directors of the organizations and publish an article in the newspaper. The project manager delegates these tasks to the Media/PR expert on the team. This becomes the Media/PR expert Responsibility. Since this awareness project impacts the upcoming fundraiser events which will be headed by the marketing department, the Media/PR expert will need to Consult with the marketing team to gather requirements or provide information or keep engaged as a stakeholder. After the tasks are completed, either the project manager or the Media/PR expert could Inform the marketing team, upper management, or other internal or external stakeholders that the tasks have been completed and the next task of the project can start.


This can apply to multiple tasks on a single project or multiple projects running within a program. This tool can take the form of a sample table or developed using excel spreadsheet with filters that would help the team narrow their outputs when dealing with multiple line items and multiple project participants. The benefit of this tool is that it helps identify project participants' roles, authorities, and increase team participation or buy-ins. It can be used on a functional level, project level and program level.


Communication Plan

Communication has always been the center of all project success. Projects or project teams cannot operate in silos. For project owners, customers, stakeholders, and teams to be well informed, there must be effective and efficient communications. Communication in this regard could be internal or external. There may be many communication channels in and outside the organization during a project that the team could utilize to keep the consistent flow of information. Since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, many organizations resulted in employees working from home. This pushes organizations to consider virtual meetings instead of in-person meetings. For some organizations who have built team morale based on physical interactions, it would probably be difficult to adjust. They may need to train their employees the needed skills to facilitate effective virtual communications on their projects. Whatever measure that is used, one thing that should be considered is a Communication Plan. A communication plan provides the opportunity for the project team to manage communications effectively throughout the project. It identifies the communication needs of both internal and external stakeholders, not forgetting that the project team and other internal functional departments are also considered project stakeholders.


When creating a communication plan, just as with other project management tools, it could take the form of a table or an excel spreadsheet could be utilized. Before a communication plan can be developed, the project team must first take into consideration factors such as the project charter which is drafted during project initiation phase, the project plan which embodies everything the project is about, stakeholder analysis, internal and external factors that may influence the project. A well-developed communication plan will include Type of Communications, Frequency of Communication, Audience or Participants, Objective of the Communication, Communication Method and for some organizations, they may include Deliverables as an added measure to the communication activities. It all depends on how detailed and specific the organization or project team wants to be when developing their communication plan.


The Type of Communication would be a kick-off meeting, planning meeting, milestone review, customer issues resolution meeting, financial budget review, change order review, quality testing or review, scope validation meeting, status review, reports, deliverables review and acceptance, and the reasons are countless depending on whether it is a small, medium, or large-scale project. The Frequency of Communication will describe how frequently these communications should take place. Based on the scale of the project, each type of communications could be Daily, Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, at every milestone that is reached, or in some cases like PMO retrospect and lesson learned review could be bi-annually or annually.


The Audience or Participants refer to the stakeholders that will be part of the communication. For instance, project kick-off meetings, scope validation or deliverables reviews could include stakeholders such as the project team, the customer, the sponsors and other external parties like the suppliers, contractors, developers, etc. The quality testing and review can include the quality assurance team, the customer, and the project manager. It may also include other internal and external parties based on the stakeholder analysis. The financial budget review could include the financial team commonly known as the accountant department, the project sponsor and the project manager.


The Objective of the communication established what needs to be achieved from these communications. An objective of communication can take different forms and add different values to the communication type. I will recommend that the communication objectives are modified to fit the status of the project and projecting what is ahead of the project completion. An objective of a quality testing and review would be to test out the newly released feature on an HR software project for employees’ benefits. It could also test if the structural steel or concrete reinforcement meets the design specifications. An objective of customer issues resolution meeting would be to review all issues that have been identified in the project to come up with a feasible solution using the expert analysis or resources available to the project. This is one of the most frequent types of communication in almost any project unless the scope was well drafted, and the project plan was uniquely put into place. Even the most straight-forward project scope I have seen ended up having some issues to deal with.


Communication Method describes how the communication will be conducted. Will this communication be virtual, in-person, over the phone, emails or other, is what the project team will need to identify. Communication Deliverables is an alternative part of the communication plan. It simply provides the results of the communication such as decisions made, or any follow-ups needed to be done. Not every organization implements a structured communication plan. For some organizations, the internal culture may influence the way communications are carried out. As for me, I have always developed my own communication plan for all my project activities. I use this plan to engage stakeholders, customers, and other influential parties that I need to maintain a consistent flow of communication.


The PMBOK describes the concept of Communication Management in detail where it explains more about communication models, styles, methods as well as some specific tools and techniques to obtain the right outputs. For communication to be effective and have a direct impact on project success, there must be an environment that cultivates open communications where no thoughts or ideas are downplayed. Effective communication undoubtedly is the key to all project success.


Work breakdown structure

Commonly known as the WBS. A Work Breakdown Structure is the process of decomposing the scope of the project into manageable tasks. These tasks are called work packages. Ideally, a WBS is created during the planning phase of the project, after the scope has been defined, but before the scheduling and budget estimates can be developed. I have not had the opportunity to use WBS in organizations I have worked for, but on other personal, business and nonprofit projects I have worked on, I always developed a WBS to accommodate the scope of work which is also used to facilitate the development of the schedule and cost estimates. Even furthermore, this tool can be used for monitoring and tracking deliveries using their unique codes for control accounts. Control Account is used to integrate the scope, schedule, and budget to compare Earn values. I will elaborate more on Earn Values in future blogs.


The concept of WBS is usually applied in a project that has a Waterfall Approach. This is because Waterfall uses predictive analysis to plan and implement project activities. However, it is not strange for the project to start using the Waterfall approach and later down the line switch to Agile approach and then finish with the initial Waterfall approach. It would depend on the complexity of the project as well as the customer’s requirements. An example would be undertaking a sub-project that has an IT delivery requirement within a construction project that uses a Waterfall approach. Another example would be a product development project that carries a Waterfall approach for the overall project delivery, but the design phase of the project uses Agile approach. This means the team uses an iterative approach while adapting to changes to establish a particular deliverable that is critical to the success of the overall project. For a team to develop a WBS, they should first understand the project scope and in some cases, may want to seek expert advice when decomposing the scope.


The WBS can take the form of an organization chart in a hierarchy format where the bigger tasks are at the top and the decomposed components are at the bottom and so forth until the team is comfortable with the work packages. WBS can be created using Microsoft Visio or other visual illustration computer software that provides features to create organization charts, process workflow and, even in Microsoft Word using text box and arrows shapes. Quite recently when I worked on a construction case studies project, I used an excel spreadsheet to create the WBS. WBS may not be necessary in all projects, but when utilized the right way, it will create good visibility which would impact both the planning and implementation of the project activities.


Stakeholder Register

What I have learned in most organizations that I have worked for is that this tools is the most overlooked but remains one of the powerful tool that yield project success. To understand the significance of this tool, the project team must first understand the importance of Stakeholder Management and Stakeholder Engagement. Stakeholder management is the process of identifying and managing the requirements of people, groups or entities who have influence or interest vested in the project. Stakeholder engagement is developing an effective engagement strategy to meet their expectations based on interest, influence, power, and potential impacts. This is one of my favorite knowledge areas among the Ten knowledge areas described in the PMBOK. If you want your project to be successful, you must be able to use effective stakeholder engagement strategies. An example of a stakeholder would be the executive sponsor – person who approves or provides the funding for the project. It could also be the end user of the project product, the functional units whose contributions are critical to the success of the project (i.e., Marketing, Quality Assurance, Business Development, Developers, Sales, HR). Stakeholders could also be external to the project team as well as the organization. An external stakeholder would be subcontractors, suppliers, media groups interested in the project, community association, city council, licensing permit agencies, lender and so on. Each of these stakeholders have a specific interest, power, influence, and potential impacts on the project.


A stakeholder Register could take many forms, but the intentions should always focus on the engagements and meeting expectations. When I worked on a project to develop a mentorship program for a career development nonprofit organization whose interest was targeting a specific group of people in the professional community, I had to develop a Stakeholder Register. In the stakeholder register, I identified the Stakeholder Names. This could be the name of the person, group or entity who is considered to have an influence on the project success or is impacted by the end results. An example of Stakeholder names would be Job Placement Organizations, Community Groups, Mentors and Mentees, Sponsors, Donors, Project team, Subject Matter Experts, Program Director etc. Secondly, I identified their Interest, or other project team may use the term “Role” based on the information presented in the project scope. Interest is the consideration of what is important to the stakeholder. For the Job Placement Organizations, their Interest could be the job candidates who could potentially take on roles within their organizations to improve their business operations. Their role could be providing the nonprofit with job openings and skills requirements for candidates. For the community group, their interest could be information about job opportunities or professional skills training and development classes.


After that analysis was done, I then identified their Expectations – which is the product that the stakeholder would like to see during or after the project. An expectation for Mentors would be to provide the resources and support (which would be defined in the plan) needed to effectively provide mentorship. An expectation of the Mentees would be to undergo a six month mentorship program that will equip them with the job skills requirements (whether hard or soft skills). An expectation of the Program Director would be developing a system or process to facilitate the program operations or objectives. Next to this analysis is their Influence – which measures how much impact the stakeholder has on the project. Some organizations who use quantifiable measurements may assign a percentage to the influence level. But I always recommend keeping it sample by using LOW, MEDIUM, or HIGH with a brief description of their specific influences. A Subject Matter Expert for the system development may have a HIGH influence because his/her expertise is critical to the project delivery. The project team may have HIGH influence because they are the ones responsible and accountable for the delivery of the results.


The last analysis is the Power – which is how much authority the stakeholder has over the project. Power analysis could also be quantified but I also recommend keeping it sample just as the influence analysis. In most cases, the project sponsors and donors are considered to have the most power on the project. This is because they provide funding to the project and if their funding stops coming, the project will stop. Other high power Stakeholders may include Compliance Regulators or the communities they may be serving. When the Stakeholder register is being developed, the project team should take into consideration the level of culture diversity among the stakeholders, the network and relationships among stakeholders and the communication technology that is available to facilitate effective engagement and the sharing of information. Lastly, the Stakeholder register can always be revised or modified if new stakeholders are identified, or the previous stakeholder is no longer part of the project.


Issues–Log

Issue log is another tool that most people do not want to be bordered with. This is because the name says it all “Issues–Log”. It is inevitable that the project team will always encounter unexpected problems mostly during the implementation of the project. These unexpected problems have the potential of increasing the project risks. Their impacts can go as far as causing a scope creep, schedule and budget overruns and several change orders. To keep the project moving in the right direction, the project team should be able to identify issues as they appear and quickly find a resolution. Some of the common issues I have experienced on projects are subcontractors recognize that the material on site does not match the specification right when they were about to implement the task. Another would be two trades working in the same space where one trade’s work impacts the quality of the other trade so there must be a rework. Even within the project team, there may be internal issues such as poor communication among project team members, the functional leader withdraws his/her staff in the middle of the project to address departmental needs adding a gap to the project. Another one is the customer does not truly understand what they need, so the deliveries result in multiple change orders and sometimes potential scope creep.


The Issues–Log is a tool that helps the project team keep track of issues that are identified. Issues–log can take the form of a table, but the most efficient software to use is excel spreadsheet. This is because it provides unlimited rows and columns to track as much data as possible. Also, the data could be filtered by project, priority levels, dates, status or who is assigned to. When I worked on a Low Voltage Cable installation project for a big client, almost halfway through the project, I began to experience unexpected issues and some issues resulted in multiple change orders while some was being resolved just by making additional follow ups. However, I needed a process that could make me more efficient in tracking them as they come. So, I developed the Issues–log using our ERP system called Smart Sheets.


Smart Sheets look and operate like Microsoft Excel, except it is a web-based tool and provides opportunity for collaboration and automation. I have had the opportunity to use Smart Sheets in two different organizations I have worked with in the past. Within my Issues-Log, I included the Project Number, Issue Name, Description of Issue, Identify By (person who identified the issue), Date Identified, Priority Level, Assigned to, Solution Status, Solution Date, Description of Resolution, Impact of Issue (whether the scope, schedule, cost or materials) and lastly, I included Resulted in Change Order (Yes or No). There benefits of using Issues–Log goes beyond keeping the project on the right track. At the end of the project, it can be used to retrospect or analyze the lesson learned. This will help the project team plan better and be more proactive in mitigating risks for their projects.


Conclusion

With all that is considered to deliver a project successfully, project tools are internal resources that enhance the planning, implementing, and management of the project. It provides an opportunity for the project team to stay in alignment with the project goals as well as the overall business needs that the project results satisfy. Without the appropriate tools, most project teams would struggle to navigate the process from start to end. This includes poor stakeholder engagement, poor performances, scope creeps, low quality, scatter communications and potentially losing good customers. For a project team to fully develop and utilize these tools, they must first consider the people who are on the project team, better yet would be using the specific tools. There must be a buy-in by the project team, project participants or stakeholders, taking into consideration their skills and capacities of the technology or software usage. Project team should also seek consultation from upper management when deploying and implementing tools to facilitate their project activities. Management buy-ins are necessary for support, improvements as well as keeping in compliance with the organization policies and procedures.


In addition, the project team will need to take into consideration the project management process flow within the organization. This would impact the type of tools needed to serve the need of the project. Not every tool will be able to fit into a project process flow. Some may take up too much data, collect redundant information or sometimes take away the time needed to prioritize other critical project tasks. Lastly, the project team should take into consideration the business environment for which the project is taking place. The business environment may present some constraints that the project team needs to take into consideration. If your project team is struggling with finding the appropriate tool(s) to facilitate their projects, try to seek consultation from experts or consider training and developing your team, and most importantly gain support from your upper management. The right tool and resources will make your project team stand out.


Thanks for Reading!


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