Essential Management Tools

We use various tools for managing our work. Some of these tools that we use are for the organization setting, some of them are used for the project management and others for managing ideas/group discussions. These tools of management help us making our thinking structured, assist us in managing various activities and support in the execution of ideas. These tools are of tremendous value and bring about efficiency, effectiveness and improve smart working.

During my career of two decades, I must have learnt and used numerous management tools. Few essential management tools amongst those that I have learnt are covered in this article. Here I will explain the usage of the tools and also provide my views on them. Please note that I have not used any hierarchy or chronological order for presenting these tools. These tools are drawn from various management philosophies - some of these are quite old (from the 1920s) and some are these are quite latest.

Hope you enjoy reading this article, appreciate these tools or even adopt a few into your arsenal!

Storyboarding

Everyone loves stories. Best messages are told in the form of a story. The information absorption is faster if told in a story form. From childhood, we all are tuned to listen to the stories. You may also remember that Morals and lessons were also taught using this method. Coming to present; even though we have grown up; our learning through a story is still in-vogue. Various businesses have adopted “sell through a story concept” to sell product & ideas, convey messages and communicate effectively.

Business & management world has adopted the storytelling concept from the entertainment industry where this is most prevalent. In the entertainment industry planning for a movie or an advertisement is done through a “Storyboard”. 

A Storyboard can be in any format. It’s basically a drawing/charting of a sequence of events or a story told using pictures, images or text.

For example, the following is a story which I have drawn in PowerPoint. This presents a sequence of events for a family’s vacation.

It starts with the idea of a vacation to end all the way to a vacation that was truly great and highly rated. The blue circles represent the interaction points from a holiday planner’s viewpoint. A holiday planner organization can use this storyboard tool to focus their efforts to improve the quality of interaction with the customer. Using a storyboard approach they can identify the interaction points and focus to make their services better such that it leads to higher ratings from customers and continuation of business on a regular basis.

The storyboard helps to represent the ideas in an easy to understand pictorial format. The key messages; story points (focus points) can be highlighted and focused upon. It is a very good tool to sell ideas and make people focus on key things. 

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 4
• Effectiveness:  4
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 3

5 Whys

“5 whys” is an interrogative technique used to identify the root cause of a problem or arrive at a solution. It explores the cause and effect relationship of a situation, event or a problem. “5 whys” must have come about while exploring the root cause and maybe after realizing that only “one why” is not sufficient to uncover the real root cause or a solution.  Some problems are not easily visible unless challenged with a continuous series of “whys”.

Let’s see an example (most common that you will find) of a car that is refusing to start. 

Using only one why – may have got us replacing the battery.

But with the usage of other 4 whys; finally, we came to the conclusion that car is not been maintained properly. 

Now you may say this is too simple. To know that the car is not maintained properly; I don’t need to ask 5 whys. I just know it by looking under the hood!

Let’s take another example of “poor sales”.

Now let’s ask 5 whys!

So now you may see that this tool has definitely got some power! 

Poor Sales actually, in this case, was the result of a poor market survey. Of course, this is a totally made-up scenario. But you may have got the working pattern of the tool.   

So next time you are evaluating a problem; try to think of 5 Whys and the power it is possessing.

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 3
• Effectiveness:  3
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 3

Matrix/ Quadrant

This is a classical tool. This diagram of important and urgent work items created by Eisenhower is well recognized by everyone. 

The beauty of this tool is in the simplicity of data analysis around data points and relative association and inference. I have used this tool in relation to different data points where the relationship or the benefits are not so obvious. And found that these become clear as soon presented using this matrix tool. 

The tools can be used in any situation to present the data once the data can be mapped with X and Y-axis. E.g. you may use this to present the relationship between education and income levels. Using this quadrant / X Y axis your presentation will be powerful and impactful. 

So next time you are stuck in a meeting or while creating a proposal presentation with the interrelationship of two sets of data; try fitting them into a quadrant. Your message will appear on its own!

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 4
• Effectiveness:  3
• Fit for Purpose: 3
• Recall value: 2

Brainstorming

Wikipedia defines brainstorming as “brainstorming is a situation where a group of people meet to generate new ideas and solutions around a specific domain of interest by removing inhibitions. People are able to think more freely and they suggest as many spontaneous new ideas as possible. All the ideas are noted down without criticism and after the brainstorming session the ideas are evaluated”.

I have used this technique within my domain i.e. of software delivery and found it to be extremely useful. The key success factors for brainstorming is “no idea is rejected or challenge in the session”. 

The free-flowing of ideas; inspire all participants to slowly open up and share their ideas. People think differently and thus with the help of brainstorming one gets a collection of varied/ different and out-of-the-box ideas.

It’s a powerful tool to resolve issues, generate ideas and help the team to work as a unit.

The results of brainstorming can be noted down differently. I have used the list method (see below) or the diagram method. Both are found to be effective.

List

1.     idea 1

2.     idea 2

3.     idea 3

3.1.  idea 3 part 1

3.2.  idea 3 part 2

Diagrammatic

Post-session; a team is assigned to elaborate the ideas, rank them and find the best fit. A different method can be used in which the list of ideas is finalized during the group session (but this method is rarely used).

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 3
• Effectiveness:  3
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 3

SIPOC

SIPOC stands for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers. It’s a process mapping tool and helps to understand who & what contributes towards the process and what and who consumes the result of the process. It’s a very good tool – originated as part of the Six Sigma quality process but finds its usage in all industries and functions.

The beauty of this tool lies in the simplicity of understanding and ease of usage. The only drawback that I had seen based on my experience was the scale or range at which this should be consistently produced. One can draw a SIPOC for the whole organization at one got or at a very granular level. At the organization level, it loses its relevance and at very narrow it gets too complicated for actual usage.

Best time to draw a SIPOC is when one is defining a new process or carrying out a review of the process for say audit or efficiency improvement purposes.  

SIPOC helps the organization, departments and the staff to understand the interdependency of the processes and input/output cycle. If used properly it can help improve the processes, bring about efficiencies, cut waste and achieve overall productivity and simplification goals.

Typical Format of a SIPOC chart is given below. It can be a with pure text or can be with diagrams/pictures.

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 4
• Effectiveness:  3
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 3

Organization Chart

Everyone understands an Organization chart (Org chart for short). All businesses have the Org Chart. It depicts the reporting hierarchy with members of staff and various leaders (and can go all the way up to CEO or Board members). Some Org charts also show matrix reporting or cross-divisional reporting. In short, it’s a simple but effective tool for people to communicate and understand an Organization’s hierarchy of power.  The usage of the Org chart can be varied. In case of financial powers – one can add an amount of expenditure sanctioning authority to each level.  Other Org Chart can show the decision for various decision-making items e.g. architectural authority etc.

The Org Chart also finds usage in other areas as well. This tool can be used to present any list that is hierarchical. E.g. in school curriculum this can be used to show chemical compounds and its hierarchy say Organic and Inorganic matters.

I have created a sample Organization of a software project as an example. One can draw different types of Org charts.

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 4
• Effectiveness:  3
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 4

RCA

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a processing tool used for identifying the root cause of any issue. Sometimes the issue is simple to understand and one can arrive at the root cause quite easily without using any tool. But at the same time, there are cases where the root cause is not easy to arrive at. In fact in my experience in most cases even coming at the correct problem statement is difficult to define. See my article on this topic “the problem with the problem statement”.

Root Cause Analysis has four sub-steps as follows:

a)    defining the problem statement

b)    alluding expected behaviour and current behaviour

c)    defining the domain and problem area

d)    assessing the root cause

Following is a generic template for Root Cause Analysis.

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 3
• Effectiveness:  4
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 2

Process Maps

Process maps or flow charts are pictorial tools that are used to present process flows. These are simple tools that can be applied to any situation or business.  Like the famous saying that goes like “a picture is worth thousand words” these flows help the reader to understand and interpret the process.

There are two types (maybe more but I have predominantly used these two) of process flows. The simple process flow (or chart) which represents the process in a simpler way without worrying about the players (actors).

A sample process map is shown below.

Simple Flow Charts

2nd type of the flow is Swim lane flow charts. In this swim-lanes are used to differentiate between actions that are performed by different actors. A sample of such is shown below.

Swim Lane Flow Charts

My preference is to use the Swim Lane flow chart as it cuts the confusion of who-does-what-when.  The key feature of these flow charts is that they can show where the decisions are being made, who are the external parties and what are the handover points. Once you use a flow chart you don’t need to write big verbiage and provide an explanation. The readers can read and understand the flow of action very easily.

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 4
• Effectiveness:  4
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 3

Venn Diagram

Venn diagram (also known as set diagram) shows the relationship between a collection of different sets of value. The Venn diagram consists of overlapping curves/circles depicting the set values for each of the individually marked curves and values for common areas.

It is very easy to understand the information from a Venn diagram. It is a very popular tool.

Let’s take the following example. The following picture presents a service model of an imaginary business.

Though this is easy to understand– when converted into a Venn diagram (as follows) we can see the difference. The Venn diagram shows all the possibilities and brings about the near-impossible feature called “dream” as well.

The usage of Venn diagram becomes difficult at times as the data sets value may not have a common element or interchange of values not possible. However, when one does have such data sets then the usage of Venn diagram adds value to the presentation and makes life easier.

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 3
• Effectiveness:  4
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 2

Project Management Gantt chart

There are many tools available for project management. My favourite is the Gantt chart.  Wikipedia defines Gantt Charts as a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. This chart lists the tasks to be performed on the vertical axis, and time intervals on the horizontal axis.

This is also the most widely used for project management tool and shows many aspects of the project in a single chart such as (a) resources required and contributing (b) activity and its duration (c) progress (d) dependencies (e ) phases of the project

Following is a typical project plan in a Gantt chart view.  There are many off-the-shelf software products available that help to create a Gantt chart. One can also create a Gantt chart in a spreadsheet.

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 3
• Effectiveness:  4
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 3

RACI

RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed. It is a management tool which helps in clarifying and agreeing on various activities and their ownership/ responsibility with different members of the team/groups. You may find a situation that in a function or a process/project the activities and their ownership is not very clear. RACI chart helps in such situations. You can map the activities and put the name of the individual/ group/ department against each column.

Then you can agree on the RACI matrix in a meeting and then there you go; you have the ownership defined. 

• Responsibility shows the primary ownership of the activity
• Accountability shows the ultimate ownership of the activity
• Consulted shows the consultation/help/ guidance or in some cases approvals sought
• Informed is people who may be impacted or required to be informed

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 4
• Effectiveness: 3
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 3

RAIDs

RAIDs are Risk, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies. I believe they are derived from Prince project management knowledge book. I can definitely say that most software projects must be using this tool. 

RAIDs are an effective tool for escalation and issue resolution. The usage of RED/AMBER and GREEN category is easy to use and attention-grabbing. Senior managers also look out for RED issues/risks and focus their attention to these issues.

The definitions of RAID components are as follows:

Risks: Potential issues – can become issues if unaddressed E.g. Machine learning experts not available this will have an impact on the delivery of those components.

Assumptions: factors that are assumed to be there / invoked for the success of the project. E.g. It is assumed that next year’s budget will be approved for the project to continue delivering the next year’s milestones.

Issues: Something that is going wrong or is already gone wrong and will definitely impact the project. Failure to remediate the issue will derail the project or cause failures. E.g. Approval to onboard client data onto the cloud is not provided by the financial regulator.

Dependency: Anything that the project is dependent upon (but not in direct control) e.g. external regulatory approvals and other things.

Each RAID item is also tagged with RAG rating. The following table shows a typical RAID summary with the number of RAIDs and RAG ratings.

Following is the actual RAID log. RAID items are regularly discussed in the project meeting and actions discussed/assigned to resolve these. Some risks / assumption / dependencies are just absorbed / accepted.

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 3
• Effectiveness:  4
• Fit for Purpose: 4
• Recall value: 4

Task List

Finally, my favourite tool “The Task List”! 

I am a natural list maker. Whether it is the list of invitees, or for vacation packing or a task list for the project that I am managing – I have a list for each occasion. The lists come naturally to me. In a way you can say lists come naturally to everyone as the first list that we all had learnt was the number list; 1, 2, 3. But in my case, you may say I got stuck with the list.

Task lists are simply put; a log of tasks/activities/actions that are required to be completed for achieving some goal. It can be focused on an individual's action items or the list for a team. The beauty of the task list lies in its simplicity. You show a task list to anybody and they will be able to recognize it without any mistake. However, don’t be alarmed just because it is simple. Under the guise of simplicity; the task list achieves many of the world’s wonders. It is by far one of the most powerful tools of management.

Following is the template for a simple task list. I am sure you will have your own template. So, go ahead use it. Start noting down at first item (#1) send the link of this article to my friends and colleagues.

My ranking for this tool (out of 5)

• Ease of use: 5
• Effectiveness: 5
• Fit for Purpose: 5
• Recall value: 4

(All tool examples are created by me in PowerPoint)