Project managers organize different resources like people, time, and money to create projects. In order to meet the requirements of the project management blueprint and the clients, they need the right skills, techniques, and even data to understand and visualize that they are on the right track. As such, they need to be analytical.
Analytical techniques are methods that analyze problems, fact or status in order to accurately forecast potential outcomes while factoring in project variables. They are used to solve specific issues in a particular task. Unlike management methods that affect the organization as a whole, analytical techniques are both task- and time-limited thus they only affect a particular project in question.
There are different types of analytical techniques used by project managers and these include simple profiling, cross tabulation, and regression analysis. Different analytical techniques are used depending on the analysis goal that project managers need. Moreover, the experience of the project manager, as well as the type of data, problems, and variables involved can also affect the type of techniques used to analyze the data.
Project managers may handle simple to complex organizational structure and using different analysis methods are important so that they can use the forecasted results for spot-on decision-making practices.
This project management term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.