In Bulfinch’s Mythology he states that after nine years of military failures to take Troy, the Greek armies were despondent and “resolved to resort to stratagem.” I’ve been on that project! We as business analysts are like Odysseus, coming up with ideas to try to get behind that great walled city and celebrate victory. The project manager for the Trojan War was Agamemnon, focused on the goal of victory but without a sense of how to do it. Surrounding him were his project team: all the armies of Greece, a thousand ships worth, all with different voices and different agendas. We remember the Greek armies as victorious. We remember the Trojan Horse as the final bit of cunning that won the war. But as business analysts we cannot fight a war for nine years. Users, stakeholders, management don’t remember the result, only the amount of pain that it takes us to complete a project. When we have a huge undertaking like the conquest of Troy, special tools can be used to make our success more likely. In this piece, we will focus on three tools that we as Odysseus can use to make the project better. In Part II we will look at ways to help Agamemnon strategize.