Overview

It is common for students to do a group project in the final year of their studies. Outside of Academica it is well understood that the timely success of a project is governed not by the intellect or capability of the team members but the by the diligence and skill of the project manager.

By their very nature student projects have inexperienced team-members who have little practical experience or training in project management. This simple guide aims to put them on a path to success.

You need a Project Manager

As soon as you have 5 or 6 people in a team you need a full-time project manager (this is because communications paths go as n!)

Project management is usually 18%-20% of the hours spent on a small project so you need to appoint a project manager. If they also have other tasks then they should not be onerous. It is very difficult to both manage a project and work on it.

What does a Project Manager do?

The Project Manager owns these documents,

• The Business Case (Why are we doing this?)
• The Project Deliverable Breakdown (What are we making?)
• The Stage Plan (What will we make first?)
• The Activity Plan (Who is making what?)
• The Risk Log (What can go wrong and how will we mitigate it?)

The Project Manager chairs the weekly project meeting when the project is statused.

The Project Manager (in a student project) does not tell people what to do, this is agreed in a team meeting.

Ninety Percent of Project Management is Record Keeping

The team needs a way to share information and for most students the best choice is a Microsoft OneNote notebook that is shared by the Project Manager. This can have sections for the information in your project. The great thing about OneNote is that you can just get started and it will evolve as you use it.

The Business Case

The Business Case is the document which states the benefits that you want to get from the project. It need only be 1 page long and you can put it in your Project OneNote book.

The Business Case must be agreed by all stakeholders such as your lecturers and any industrial partners. You will be assessed on whether you achieve the benefits. Here are some example single line business cases, yours will be a page long, in a real business they might be 10 pages long and have sections like “Prior Research” or “Global Sales Opportunities”.

• We will make a set of teaching materials that will inspire students with a love of science
• We will make a robot that can sort blocks using binocular vision and thereby increase our understanding of the challenges of this task.
• We will study the behaviour of bats in urban environments and thereby inform conservation policies

The Project Deliverable Breakdown

This is the big idea so pay attention,

A project is not people “doing stuff” it is people “making things”.

You must identify 5 to 8 (typically) things that your project will make. These are called Deliverables. For example,

1. Leaflets
2. Poster
3. Video
4. Portable Demonstration Equipment
5. Assembly Instructions

Each of these Deliverables should have a section in your Project OneNote Book where you store all the information about it.

You should carefully record what is to made and the acceptance criteria. Common headings in the Deliverable Description are,

• Deliverable Name (must be a noun)
• Overview
• Key Features
• Who is making it
• Acceptance Criteria
  • What tests will we do?
  • Who will test it?

Statusing the project

A project has lots of activities that go on in parallel which makes it difficult to keep track of progress. Because of this a project manager does not try to track things daily but takes the project status once a week.

Because you paid attention when we discussed the Deliverables above you know that that we are interested in what has been made not the activities. For example,

• Bill says he spent 8 hrs on a leaflet. The project manager says “I don’t care – show us the leaflet” (you should strive to be kinder than this but you get the idea).

He writes Meeting Notes and records Actions in the OneNote book. If nothing has been made then there is no progress to report.

Stage Plan

Your student project will need at least these stages

• Start-up (1 week)
  • Agree the Business Case
  • Identify the Project Deliverables including the Acceptance Criteria
  • Decide who will work on which Project Deliverables
  • Identify risks and write them down in the Risk Log (Project OneNote page)
• Risk Reduction Stage One (1 or 2 weeks)
  • Review your risk log and do the difficult, tricky things first. For example, if your project needs a particular piece of equipment get it in your hand – not simply promised.
• [Optional – Risk Reduction Stage Two (1 or 2 weeks)]
  • You should have mitigated the worst risks and you can now address smaller risks
• Construction
  • In the earlier stages you solved all the big problems you can now just make your deliverables.
• Handover
  • You will make sure that all your documentation is up to date and hand over your deliverables to the client. They may need training.

A note on activity planning

Activity planning is “who does what when?” In a student project this is not the sole concern of the project manager but the whole team should decide this in the weekly Statusing Meeting. The project manager’s job is simply to track progress.

Team Members will find it useful if they estimate how many hours, they will need to make the deliverables that are assigned to them. However the project manager is only interested in in what they will deliver to the next Statusing Meeting.

An agenda for the Weekly Statusing Meeting