Planning and Executing Your Project

A project is a problem needing an explanation. Remember without a plan there is no control.

Pre-Planning Phase:

1. Define the Problem

The major obstacle to getting a job done properly is failure to define the problem correctly. You are fortunate, because an overall problem statement has been given to you. Your problem statement may be general and ambiguous. Some of you maybe starting with “Cook Dinner”, others with “Cook a Spaghetti Dinner”, and others still with “Cook a Red Tomato Spaghetti Dinner”. You need to decide what specific tasks you can accomplish during this course; this is the first step in planning your project. The problem statement may need to be expanded or contracted to fit the time constraints during the course. Defining what these time restraints are is a matter of breaking down the work and deciding upon the time the task activities will take and creating milestones from the work break down. You should now make up your own problem statement.

2. Conduct a Literature Search

Literature searches help you to define what has done before. They will help you define the method in which you will conduct the experiment and allow the team to understand the theoretical constructs behind the problem. Once the literature search is completed the team can begin to plan the experiment.

3. Develop Solution Options

Develop options by brainstorming what outcomes you might expect. Focus on the results you wish to obtain.

Planning Stage:

Remember: Plan now or pay later in time confusion and ineffectiveness.

1. Mission Statement

Creating the mission statement helps you to understand your overall goals. It is important in order for everyone to understand each other’s vision. The Mission Statement allows the team to have an overall objective to compare the progress of the team with the vision of the team. The Mission Statement is different than the problem statement, which defines the problem but does not include the solution. It answers two questions: What are we doing? How are we going to do it? Once the mission statement is defined a scope statement can begin to be developed.

2. Scope of Project

(also known as Scope Statement) What will and will not be done? Question everything in the beginning. Creating a Scope Statement entails expanding the mission and problem statements into actual goals, sub-goals and activities necessary to get the work done. The scope statement defines the overall parameters of the project and includes the project work requirements. Select potential realistic project objectives that are clear, attainable, measurable, realistic and time limited (Lewis, Fundamentals of Project Management). Be very careful of emergent expansion, which is when people have a good idea after the project has been planned that expands the project beyond the scope.

3. Work Breakdown Structure

The Work Breakdown Structure takes objectives and breaks them down into goals and then lists individual tasks. The Work Breakdown includes every task. Work breakdowns usually consist of three to six levels of task breakdown.

a. Goal-Setting The first step in planning the Work Breakdown is enumerating the long and short term goals of the team and of each individual. When you set goals you should be able to plan more efficiently; you can ensure that each task you plan is relevant by seeing how it relates to the accomplishment of one of your goals. Each individual should have long and short term goals, and the team members should collaborate in defining the long and short term goals for the team. Ideally, short term goals represent steps on the path towards realizing the long term goals.

b. Resources Planning (This sentence makes no sense to me, I cannot edit it because I can not extract the meaning.) Is this what you mean?: Think about how you will utilize your resources in planning and accomplishing the various tasks. How will the availability of different resources affect your Action Plans, Activity Lists, Mission Statement and Scope Statement? Your faculty advisor is a resource. Ask your advisor, TA and industrial consultant for comments on your plans; they can advise you as to what is realistic.

c. Activity Lists The activity lists contain the tasks, the person doing the task, the estimated time required, and the order in which the tasks are to be done. Arrow Diagrams or Gant charts show the relationships between tasks. Weekly Activity Lists are part of progress reporting activities. Scheduling the tasks will allow you to understand whether the Scope Statement and Mission Statement are realistic in terms of defining the project parameters.

Task division for Activity Lists can be dependent on volunteerism, or can be based on understanding and utilizing team member’s strengths and weaknesses, which is far more effective. In order to use this method, you must decide what competencies are needed to accomplish the tasks.

It is the team leader’s job to clarify each task for the team member. Be directive about the tasks assigned. If you feel the team member has expert knowledge in what they are doing you can delegate tasks to team members.

Each team member should prepare a personal plan for accomplishing the tasks they are responsible for, i.e. the Oral Presentation Plan or writing the Introduction to the Proposal. The team leader is responsible for the global scheduling, i.e. devising a plan to complete and edit the entire Proposal.

If a team member has done a good or an inadequate job feedback is important from the rest of the team. Direct feedback on task accomplishment is necessary to measure the team’s progress.

All team members need to be able to adjust the plan as problems arise with the project and their personal schedules. Communicating changes and adjusting the plan is integral to accomplishing the task.

d. Time Estimating Estimate the time commitment from each member of your team, and the time each task will require. Update your time estimates periodically based on historical data. It is important to stress that you expect timely responses from all the team members. Communicating immediately when you notice that your time estimates are off-base can be critical to reaching your goals.

Example: There are 11 weeks with 8 hours per week in laboratory and three (make the example a bit more concrete) people to do the work. Therefore each individual has 88 hours to contribute to the problem as in class time, and the team has 264 individual man-hours. Each individual has committed an additional 6(don’t scare them, you just committed them to 18 hrs of work!) hours per week to do homework on this project. This gives the project another 18 (your math didn’t add up…) hours per week of work time commitment, or a total of 198 hours over the course of the semester. Therefore, the project has a total of 462 man-hours that can be committed to the project. Is this enough time to accomplish your objectives? How will you use this time?

e. Obstacles What could go wrong? Make a list of problems that you anticipate encountering, and think about how these obstacles might affect your Activity Lists, Scope Statement, and Mission Statement.

f. Schedules including milestones. We call these Action Plans. Develop milestones to focus you on the desired outcome and ensure that you know you have accomplished it. When you incorporate these milestones into your Activity Lists and schedules, you have developed an Action Plan. Action Plans help to keep the team focused by providing short-term goals that act as steps towards the overall objective. Is your action plan a functional system for accomplishing the task? Milestones are listed on the Monthly Calendar.

g. Additions to Ground Rules In order to keep an Action Plan flexible, there should be a system for adapting the plan to what is actually happening. This system should be a part of your ground rules. Development of a successful system can start with a list of the most important aspects of the project to track and the most probable areas of failure in the newly developed plan.