ENGR2110

Management and Planning Tools

Objectives

• Knowledge and application of four management tools that will assist design team with prioritization, scheduling and skill utilization

• Teamwork

– Maximizing team productivity

– Develop a system of assigning tasks

– Define an orderly procedure for

communication

– Develop an evaluation system

Steps

• What

– tasks will be performed

• Schedule

– time sequence and priority of tasks

• Who

– Individuals, subgroups or the entire design

team

Planning Tree Diagram

• Decompose Large task into smaller ones

– Individuals, subgroups

• Parallels function tree (Section 3.1)

Planning

Tree

Planning tree

diagram can grow or

shrink as project

progresses

Why?

Gantt Chart

• The Gantt Chart is tool for scheduling tasks

– Bar graph showing the beginning and end of

each task

Gantt Chart

– Can show smallest level or required group

activities for larger tasks or a combination

– Why would “problem understanding” be

allocated to week 6?

– Which tasks overlap? Does it make sense that

they would overlap?

Gantt charts

• Any dependent tasks must be scheduled after the tasks they depend on

• Availability of human and physical resources must be considered

– expected workload must match the size of the

subgroup or team

Prioritization Matrix

• Still uncertainty even when all required tasks are identified

– Always be a shortage of time and human

resources

• Manage limitations by concentrating on highest priority tasks

• Pair-wise comparison of tasks

Prioritization Matrix Each task given a (+) or (-) comparison to

each of the other tasks

Priority measure

Prioritization Matrix

• What are the five most important tasks in preceding figure?

Job Responsibility Matrix

• Task assignment to individuals or small groups

– Of individual, need a secondary responsibility

to another team member. Why?

Job Responsibility Matrix

N: this member should be regularly updated

TeamWork

• Potential problems

– Highly motivated people take on too much of

the work

– Overall productivity reduced if contributions

from certain team members discouraged

– Contrasting work ethic

– Personality conflicts (respect)

Team optimization

• Align project tasks with team member skills

– Avoid overspecialization for educational

projects

• Each team member should have access to ALL files, drawings, or research information

• Redundancy (back up files, drawings, more than one person)

Communication

• Best members must tolerate and encourage the less productive members

– Less productive workers must step up

performance (try to avoid being weak link)

• Small team

– Job resp. matrix, Gantt chart, regular mtgs

• Large team(unable to meet regularly)

– Create a formal management system

– Need a project manager

Communication

• Professional Approach

– Specific and brief

• Regular mtgs, email, text, dropbox or similar file share, create own website chatroom/forum, phone

• Don’t email/text for policy discussions, explaining systems or solving large problems

Evaluation

• Have periodic reviews

– Remind team members of responsibilities

– Carefully, anonymously

– Forward to prof, supervisor

– Look for trouble areas

– Give simple tasks to reintegrate team

members

Peer Evaluation