Lecture -Project

Management

Project Management -

Micro•The day-to-day operation of the

project

•Project status report

•Action items

•SMART

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.

Project Status Self-Assessment

Examine your list of project learning action items…

1. Is each of the schedule items SMART? Make it SMART if not already?

2. Do each of the schedule items have an owner? A due date?

3. Is the pace of project learning going to support the snapshot day milestone?

4. Is the balance of effort ok?

5. Add any missing key items.

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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

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 rocket blew up”) 

• Usually a sequence of small delays that add up, bleed project to death 

• Catastrophic event the night before the due date is a failure to plan for catastrophe.

Project Inputs and Outputs

• Inputs = resources: time, materials, people

• Time => complete tasks. 

• Keyword: Schedule 

• Materials => money. 

• Keyword: Budget 

• Output = deliverables: prototype, thesis, new house, …

• Successful project:

• Scope, Schedule and Spend to complete work

• Deliver result on time, within budget

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

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.

Identifying Milestones

•What are some key milestones for your project?

•What are some key elements of the WBS?

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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!)

Other Resources•Wikipedia: Search for “Project

management” and follow the links

•A Short Course in Project Management:

•http://office.microsoft.com/enus/project/HA102354821033.aspx

•Tools - ms project, http://www.ganttproject.biz/

•See capstone website for good examples like this

Forming Initial Schedule

•Form the initial schedule (on paper) given the milestones and WBS.

•Bring a completed schedule to the next meeting.

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