Lecture 5 3 - Controlling Your Project

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Lecture 5

Controlling your Project

10 August 2010


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Controlling your project

Aims

To introduce the skills needed to manage yourself and your

project effectively as it is progressing Learning Objectives

Control the 5 elements (in project planning ) as your projectprogresses

Understand problems that can occur and be aware of ways

of dealing with them Manage time effectively

Work efficiently in a project team

Know how to use your supervisor effectively


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Introduction

Need to carefully manage a project and plan it

well, and in control

Need to be aware of problems that mightarise, remain motivated, manage your time

effectively, make effective use of your

supervisor and deal with other stakeholders

appropriately


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Project Initiation

Planned your project ready to start work on

the actual project itself

In large industrial project, initiation can be amajor task

A launch workshop

Stakeholders are introduced

The project plan discussed

Work assigned


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Involved with bringing together the project

team, establishing a project office, working

practices, etc.


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Project Elements

A project consists of five elements:

Time

Resources Scope

Quality


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Project Control

The project elements require managing and

controlling through:

Definition Planning

Initiation

Control

closure


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Dealing with Problems

A risk management process enables you toidentify, prioritise and control risks in yourproject

Things can go wrong in a project all projectsencounter problems

How you deal with the problem?

Not to panic Tackle them objectively and professionally

Make best of the situation


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Weakening

Can happen at any stage of your project

Stem from lack of motivation, lack of confidence,losing direction,

Therefore, it is best that you select a project that

you are really interested in

Dealing with the problem: Address the root cause

Move on to something else


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Personal problems

Experiencing personal problems over the period ofyour project

Illness, family bereavement, getting married,having babies, moving house, changing job etc

These might change the way you work on yourproject, drain on your time and your emotional

energy Talk & tell someone supervisor, friends, personal

tutor or course leader


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Hardware Failure

The computer you use may fails and data and files

are lost or erased!

Make numerous and frequent backup


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Data availability

Journal or books are not available, cant get hold

of some data, lose your contact in a local company

where you hoped to perform a case study or

receive poor response from questionnaire

distributed

Set up contingency plan; e.g. change yourprojects direction (does not rely on particular set

of data), talk to supervisor


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Discovering your work/research has been

done before

Other things taking priority


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Managing Your Time

There are only 24 hours/day, seven days in a

week, no matter who you are

Time management is important! Fundamental analysis (a process) in time

management involve three stages :

Decide what you want to do

Analyse what you are currently doing

Change what you are doing to achieve your aims


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Decide what you want to do

Decide exactly what you want to achieve in terms

of goals and objectives (hence, deciding on the

project aims & objectives are VERY important

something achievable!)

Analyse what you are doing Identify how you are spending your time

Need to categorise the time you have identified


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Change the way you do things

what you cant dump, delay . What you cant

delay, delegate .. What you cant dump or delay

or delegate, do. Turla & Hawkins, 1994

Two ways to improve your use of time to achieve

the goals:

Eliminate activities you dont need to do Be more efficient doing the things you have to do


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Time management tips

Procastination

Grains of time

Email

Unfinished business

Interruptions

Perfectionism Short breaks

Log books


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Working with your Supervisor

A supervisors primary professional

responsibility is to develop his or her research

students so that they can think & behave as

independent academic and scholarly

researchers in the field of study concerned. Cryer, 2006


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Blaxter et al., 2006 identify two roles a

supervisor can perform:

A manager

An academic advisor


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Areas which a supervisor should be able to

advice (University of Warwick, 1994):

Research design & scheduling

Literature surveys

Theoretical and conceptual development

Methodological issues

Development of appropriate research skills

Data collection & analyses


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Student expectations of their supervisor: Student expect to be supervised

Student expect supervisors to read their work well inadvance

Students expect their supervisors to be availablewhen needed

Students expect their supervisors to be friendly, openand supportive

Student expects their supervisors to be constructivelycritical

Student expects their supervisors to have a goodknowledge of the research area


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Supervisors expectation of their student(university of warwick): To arrange a regular meetings

To maintain a regular work pattern To discuss progress and problems fully

Philip & Pugh, 2005 To be independent

To produce written work that is not just a first draft

To be honest when reporting on their progress

To follow advice that is given

To be excited about their work


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Using your Supervisor Effectively

Prepare for your meeting

Decide what topic to discuss in meeting

Make notes Arrange the next meeting

Follow your supervisors advice

Be prepared to communicate with yoursupervisor through other means


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Working in Teams

Enables responsibilities to be shared

You are able to specialise in areas you are

comfortable with and good at It provides experience of teamwork

You can perform much larger project that you

could achieve on your own You have a support-network of colleagues


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Team roles

Two kind of skills:

Personal skills

Technical skills

Nine personal or team skills that people bring

to a project.

Can be grouped into three categories:


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Action Oriented Roles

Shaper

Implementer

Completer-Finisher

People Oriented Roles

Coordinator

Resource investigator

Team worker


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Systems analysis

Systems design

Information systems

Human computer interaction

Networking

Computer system architecture

Graphics

Mathematics

Documents

Lecture 5 3 - Controlling Your Project