Project Management

In constructing your timeline, you have already started on Project Management. In this section, you will learn some additional skills for finishing a project as planned. In professional settings, project teams are often led by a "Project Manager." If you are drawn to this kind of work, it is a well-paid career you might want to consider pursuing. Most project managers get their training through business or engineering programs. If you are interested in this area as a profession, take a look at the following link:

http://www.pmi.org/

Project Manager Role

For the purposes of finishing your class project, the project manager's duties are as follows:

Timekeeper -keeps the project on the timeline track to deliver the project on schedule.
Resource management -collects resources, maintains the budget, and coordinates deliveries.
Team Facilitation - keeps team working together smoothly.
Work Assignments - oversees the team members' work assignments to make sure they are progressing as planned.
Removes Roadblocks - troubleshoots and resolves situations that may derail or delay the project.
Quality control - ensures that the final product is up to quality standards.

You team will need to decide how to fill the role of project manager. Some options are:

Appoint one member as project manager for the duration of the project
Rotate the role.
Share the duties between team members.

Pick a method that works best for your team.

How is the role of a Project Manager different from that of Team Facilitator? There's quite a bit of overlap. The Project Manager not only acts as Team Facilitator, but also balances the need to complete the project with facilitating the team. The following diagram gives some insight into this balancing act between managing teams and finishing projects:

Diagram showing Project Manager's balancing act between Team and Project needs.

From the above diagram illustrates the project manager's balancing act between needing to finish the project with the team's personal needs. If both needs are low, then nothing gets accomplished. If the need to finish the project is too great, then the job may get done, but at a personal cost to the team. On the other hand, if the team's personal needs are much higher than finishing, the team may have a great time, but the work may suffer.

You are now ready to identify and agree on work assignments to complete your project. First, let's check into our vacation planners to see how they handle this stage of their project:

Project Management:
Chris:	Okay now, let's figure out what all we need to do. We said that we would get our plane tickets within the next 10 days, so let's focus on that first.
Pat:	Hey, I've got an idea. There are all these travel-related websites on the Internet. I could go check them out to see what the schedules and prices are.
Lee:	Or, we could check out the Sunday Travel section in the newspaper and see what's advertised.
Kim:	Those are both good ideas. Why don't you each work on them and let's see what we have in three days?
Chris:	How about our next milestone of settling lodging and transportation?
Pat:	Well there's always the Internet. Since I'm already checking on travel sites, I might as well check on car rentals and lodging.
Lee:	Pat, while you're checking the Internet, you might want to look at two charter companies, ATA and SunTrips.
Pat:	Sure, no problem.
Kim:	There are travel books in the library and maybe it would be worth buying one or two at the bookstore, if they aren't too expensive.
All:	Great idea. You're in charge.
Chris:	Wait a minute. I don't think it's a good idea for Kim to absorb all the book costs. Maybe we should figure out how much money we could spend on new books.
Kim:	You know I do have an AAA membership and could pick up some of their maps and travel books for free. Let's start with those.
Chris:	Okay. Let's go over who's doing what. Pat will be in charge of checking planes, lodging, and transportation over the Internet. Lee is going to check out the Travel sections of the newspapers, and Kim will pick up maps and guide books from AAA. Hmm… looks like I'm getting off easy. How about if we meet at my house in three days at noon and I'll provide the lunch?
All:	You got a deal on that one!

Work Assignments

In this example, the team members readily take on different work assignments. Hopefully, your team will also. Try to even out the workload so that everyone contributes his or her own fair share.

Summary

In this module, you learned about the different stages of project development when collaborating in an online environment. For learning purposes, these stages have been more clearly delineated than they usually occur in real life. While brainstorming may be used at the beginning of a project, it often pops up whenever needed. So one stage usually overlaps with another, depending on the needs of a particular project. With this interplay of different stages in mind, let's review what we've covered:

Communicating with your project team
Setting project goals and purpose
Generating a pool of ideas by brainstorming and creative thinking
Critiquing ideas and forming a list of priorities
Constructing your project timeline
Work assignments and completing your project through project management techniques.

As a final note, most projects are really rarely finished. Teams usually have ideas left over that were never implemented, or some improvements that were never made. Each project is a learning experience.

There's an old maxim that says, in effect, that the experience you needed to do a project comes only after completing it. It's also helpful to remember:

There are no finished pieces. There are only deadlines.

John Wilkes, Director Science Communications Program
University of California at Santa Cruz

Please send us your feedback.

This module is in field test version. We need to hear from you as to what parts worked well for you. We especially need to know those parts that need improvement. You can give us feedback online at:

Student feedback for Study Strategies