Lecture - Project Management

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Lecture -Project Management
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Project Management - Micro

• The day-to-day operation of the project
• Project status report
• Action items
• SMART

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Meeting Agenda

• You will have a project meeting every week with
  the instructor and the meeting should
• Every meeting starts with an agenda!
• Every meeting starts with reviewing action
  items/schedule status.
• Every meeting concludes with assignment of next
  action items.
• A project schedule is both for planning and
  tracking.
• A project schedule has no value if it is not used
  after creation.

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Project Status Self-Assessment

• Examine your list of project learning action
  items
• Is each of the schedule items SMART? Make it
  SMART if not already?
• Do each of the schedule items have an owner? A
  due date?
• Is the pace of project learning going to support
  the snapshot day milestone?
• Is the balance of effort ok?
• Add any missing key items.

GROUP WORK
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Project Management - Macro

• Project  an endeavor to create a unique
  product or service
• Micro - deals with day to day operations
• Macro - deals with planning and vision

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Why Projects Fail

• They run out of Schedule or Budget (time or money)
   
• The death of a thousand cuts. 
• Not usually a single catastrophic event (the rock
  et blew up) 
• Usually a sequence of small delays that add up, bl
  eed project to death 
• Catastrophic event the night before the due date
  is a failure to plan for catastrophe.

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Project Inputs and Outputs

• Inputs  resources time, materials, people
• Time gt complete tasks. 
• Keyword Schedule 
• Materials gt money. 
• Keyword Budget 
• Output  deliverables prototype, thesis, new hous
  e, 
• Successful project
• Scope, Schedule and Spend to complete work
• Deliver result on time, within budget

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Tools for Documenting Schedule

• Gantt charts (MS Project, http//www.ganttproject.
  biz/)
• Spreadsheet (pm_template.xls)
• Project management document concepts
• resources
• tasks
• milestones
• dependencies
• complete
• hierarchy

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Project Decomposition

• A project can be broken into milestones
• Milestones help us get things done.
• A project and a milestone is too big to address
  in one step
• Decomposition helps define describable and
  actionable chunks.
• This is called the work breakdown structure
  (WBS).
• The individual assignable item - action items.
• An action item is a small chunk of work that is
  very well defined and assigned for completion on
  a certain date.

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Identifying Milestones

• What are some key milestones for your project?
• What are some key elements of the WBS?

GROUP WORK
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Other Milestones

• specs complete (end of phase)
• specs approved
• design review
• prototype created/tested
• concept selected
• report due
• assignment due
• and more! (milestones drive the project!)

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Other Resources

• Wikipedia Search for Project management and
  follow the links
• A Short Course in Project Management
• http//office.microsoft.com/enus/project/HA1023548
  21033.aspx
• Tools - ms project, http//www.ganttproject.biz/
• See capstone website for good examples like this

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Forming Initial Schedule

• Form the initial schedule (on paper) given the
  milestones and WBS.
• Bring a completed schedule to the next meeting.

GROUP WORK