Project Management ToolBox: Tools and Techniques for the Practicing Project Manager

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Selecting and Customizmg Project Management Toolbox

You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost.

Martha Graham

Which of All These Tools Do You Really Need?

Now that we finished our review of 50+ project management tools in the previous chapters, a natural question comes to mind: “Which of all these tools and in which form do I really need?” The goal of this chapter is to answer this question by developing a framework for selecting and adapting a project management toolbox that supports the SPM process that we discussed in Chapter 1. Specifically, the framework should help customize the use of the toolbox while accounting for the specific situation of various companies and projects.

Process for Selecting and Adapting Project Management Toolbox

There are three major steps, each including several tasks, in selecting and adapting a project management toolbox for specific projects (see Figure 16.1):

• Secure strategic alignment
• Customize the project management toolbox
• Improve continuously

Aligning the project management toolbox with the organization's competitive strategy tells us in broad terms what categories of project management tools to select and adapt. This alignment drives the next step—customization of the project management toolbox by selecting specific project management tools. The deployment of the project management toolbox in real-world projects will reveal its glitches and generate new learning, resulting in a need for the toolbox's ...