Tools and Techniques Used in Project Management

Management in business simply means process to control or handle things or people like planning, decision making, organizing, financial, human resources, etc. to attain or achieve the organization's goals and objectives.

Project management means application of knowledge, tools, techniques to project activities so as to achieve goals and meet success criteria in given period of time. Main aim to achieve goal within given limitation or restriction.

1. Process Modeling and Management tools : Process modeling simply means to model software processes. At first, developers need to fully understand process and work of software, then only they can be able to model process. This tool represents key elements of process that are important. So, it makes it easier to perform work tasks in efficient and proper manner.

2. Project Planning tools :Project planning simply means to plan and set up project for successful development within timeframe. It includes defined stages or steps to define objectives of project with designated resources, clarify scope of what should be done, and then develop list of tasks that are needed to be done to complete it. Tools used for project planning can be CPM (Critical Path Method) and PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique). Both of them are used for finding parallelism, eliminating bottlenecks in projects, and scheduling activities of project. Some tools that make planning of project in efficient way are Trello, Nifty, Asana, TeamGantt, etc.

3. Risk Analysis tools : Risk analysis simply means to identify and analyze errors or defects or any issue that can cause negative impact and result in the changed outcome and objectives of project. The analysis is done so that organization can fix issue or remove error to avoid effect caused by them. These tools help in identifying risks and are useful for binding risk table. These provide detailed guidance in the identification and analysis of risks. The risks identified can be categorized into catastrophic, critical, marginal, or negligible. A cost is associated with each risk which can be calculated at each stage of development. Some tools and techniques are Delphi technique, Information gathering technique, Checklist analysis, etc.

4. Project Management tools : Project management simply means to track or control progress and tasks of project. These tools are extension of project planning tools. These tools are generally used to update pans if require and schedule project. These tools make Project Management more effective and efficient. Some tools are Gantt chart, mind map, WBS chart (Work Breakdown Structure), etc.

5. Metrics and Management tools : Metric management tools are very good for software as they provide very quick and easy way to track software development, set goals, and measure performance. These tools help in capturing and finding out specific metrics that are useful and provide overall measure of quality. These tools focus more on process and product characteristics. For example, “defects per function point”, “Line Of Code/person-month”.

6. Quality Assurance tools : Quality assurance in software engineering simply means to maintain level of quality of software product by focusing on each step of process of development or production and delivery. It prevents mistakes and any defects or errors in manufactured products. These are actually metrics tools that audit source code to ensure compliance with language standards. Some tools that are used for both Quality management plan and to control quality process are Pareto Diagrams, control charts, histograms and scatter diagrams, etc.

7. Database Management tools : Database management simply means to organize, store, and retrieve data from computer in efficient manner. It provides consistent interfaces for project for all data, in particular, configuration objects are primary repository elements. Some best database management tools are MySQL workbench, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, TablePlus, TeamDesk, etc.