Management & Planning Tools These tools are particularly useful in structuring unstructured ideas, making strategic plans, organizing and controlling large and complex projects. These tools are very effective for teams and, in some cases, for individuals. They do not use hard data but rely on subjective information. Applications of these tools has been proven useful in process improvement, cost reduction, policy deployment, and new-product development.

WHY, WHY Key to finding the root cause of a problem by focusing on the process rather than on people. Describes the problem in specific terms and then ask “why”. This tool is very beneficial in developing critical thinking. It is frequently a quick method of solving problems.

FORCED FIELD ANALYSIS Identifies the forces and factors that may influence the problem or goal. Helps an organization to better understand promoting or driving and restraining or inhibiting forces so that the positives can be reinforced and the negatives reduced or eliminated. Steps: Define the objective. Determine criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of the improvement action. Brainstorm the forces that promote and inhibit achieving the goal. Prioritize the forces from greatest to least. Take action to strengthen the promoting forces and weaken the inhibiting forces.

NOMINAL GROUP TECHNIQUE Provides the issues/ideas input from everyone on the team and for effective decisions. Steps: Everyone writes on a piece of paper the situation they think is most important. The papers are collected, and all situations are listed on a flip chart. Rank the situations (using another paper). Give numerical values 1… Points for each problem are totaled and the item with the highest number of points is considered to be the most important.

AFFINITY DIAGRAM A tool for organizing a large number of ideas, opinions, and facts relating to a broad problem or subject area. Procedure: State the issue in a full sentence. Brainstorm using short sentences on self-adhesive notes. Post them for the team to see. Sort ideas into logical groups. Create concise descriptive headings for each group.

INTERRELATIONSHIP DIAGRAM Identifies and explores causal relationships among related concepts or ideas. It allows the team to classify the cause-and-effect relationships among all factors so that the key drivers and outcomes can be used to solve the problem. Steps: The team should agree on the issue or problem statement. All of the ideas or issues from other techniques or from brainstorming should be laid out. Start with the first issue. The second iteration is to compare other issues. The entire diagram should be reviewed and revised where necessary. The diagram is completed by tallying the incoming and outgoing arrows and placing this information below the box.

TREE DIAGRAM Maps out the paths and tasks necessary to complete a specific project or reach a specified goal. Procedure: Choose an action-oriented objective statement from the interrelationship diagram, affinity diagram, brainstorming, team mission statement. Using brainstorming, choose the major headings. Generate the next level by analyzing the major headings. Repeat this question at each level.

MATRIX DIAGRAM Display relationships between ideas, activities or other dimensions in such a way as to provide logical connecting points between each item. Data are presented in table form and can be objective or subjective, which can be given symbols with or without numerical values. Procedure: Select the factors affecting a successful plan. Select the appropriate format (depend on the number of variables). Determine the relationship symbols.

PRIORITIZATION MATRICES Prioritizes issues, tasks, characteristics, based on weighted criteria using a combination of tree and matrix diagram techniques. Once prioritized, effective decision can be made. Prioritization matrices are designed to reduce the team’s options rationally before implementation planning occurs. Steps: Construct an L-Shaped matrix combining the options, which are the lowest-level of detail of the tree diagram with the criteria. Determine the implementation criteria using the nominal group technique (NGT) or any other technique that will satisfactorily weight the criteria. Prioritize the criteria using the NGT. Each team member weights the criteria so the total weight equals 1, and the results are totaled for the entire team. Rank order the options in terms of importance by each criterion, average the results, and round to the nearest whole number. Compute the option importance score under each criterion by multiplying the rank by the criteria weight.

PROCESS DECISION PROGRAM CHART The PDPC avoids surprises and identifies possible countermeasures. PDPC is a method for mapping out every conceivable event and contingency that can occur when moving from a problem statement to possible solutions. Steps: The team state the objective. That activity is followed by the first level. In some cases a second level of detailed activities may be used. The team brainstorms to determine what could go wrong with the conference, and these are shown as the “what-if” level. The countermeasures are brainstormed and placed in a balloon in the last level. The last step is to evaluate the countermeasures and select the optimal ones by placing an O underneath. Place an X under those that are rejected.

ACTIVITY NETWORK DIAGRAM Program evaluation and review technique (PERT). Critical path method (CPM). Arrow diagram. Activity on node (AON). The diagram shows completion times, simultaneous tasks, and critical activity path. Steps: The team brainstorms or documents all the task to complete a project. The first task is located and placed on the extreme left of a large view work surface. Any tasks that can be done simultaneously are placed below. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all tasks are placed in their correct sequence. Number each task and draw connecting arrows. Determine the critical path by completing the four remaining boxes in each task.

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