Project Management Basics

• Range of projects: Science and Engineering, Finance, Multi-Media

• All projects need resources: Time, Manpower, Funds…,• Research and development: Government and corporate

funding; Knowledge Partnership Scheme (KTP)

• Design and build a microprocessor control system for precision dc measurement instrumentation.

• Design and build a new line interface unit on broadband (ADSL) lines to

• accommodate category 6 compliance. (Design of a passive in-line filter for Cat 6)”.

• Develop Intelligent Building Management Systems (IBMS)

Government and corporate funding

2005 Figures

GDP

billion

£

R&D

Investment

Billion £

% of

GDP/Turnover

Microsoft Corp. £20 £3.3 16.5%

UK £1,118 £21 1.86%

USA £6,784 £176 2.6%

EU £7,300 £141 1.93%

Distribution of Funding in the UK in R&D:

Business 66%, HE 22%, Government 6%

Example of Government support for R&D

Learned Society Funding

International Funding EU & Commonwealth

A successful project has delivered its aims and objectives, on time and within budget.

Longer + Over budget = Bad Shorter and Under budget = Also Bad

Project Management Categories:• · Project definition: Defining the scope of the

project, your aims and objectives and general understanding of the problem.

• ·  Research: Find out more, the more you know the better your solution will be. Consider what others have done in similar situations. Research is the key to success in every project.

• ·  Planning: Plan your time and organise the work to meet the deadlines milestones etc.

For example, a student may be given an assignment brief as follows,

• You are required to perform a feasibility study for a project topic of your choice. The choice of topic is up to you, but you must select it on the basis of the available time that you have for this study. For your study you are required to produce a feasibility report and also to prepare an oral presentation of your findings that will last 5 minutes. The report and the presentation will describe the work that you have done for your feasibility study.

• The report is due in 8 weeks time, and in week 9 you have to deliver an oral presentation to an audience of peers, and academic staff. Your presentation should describe the feasibility study and it should be prepared to last exactly 5 minutes.

Project outputs, Project timing, Project inputs:

Context diagram Feasibility Study

Feasibility Study

Project

Write Report

Identify Topic

Prepare 5-minute

Presentation

Literature survey and research

9 WEEKS

Context diagram Student Record System

Student Record System

New Students

Interrupted Studies

students

Graduating Students

Continuous

DBase

Update

Enrolment

Returning Students

Research is the basic means of gathering and processing information.

Plan of Action: Where do we start? Plans can change!

• Planning = organising activities and resources to achieve the desired outputs within time and budget

• Free project management templates can be downloaded from the Internet. They include

Project Initiation Risk Management

Project Planning Issue Management

Project Execution Quality Management

Change Management Project Closure

Feasibility analysis Case Study

• A feasibility study is used to provide an analysis of the objectives, requirements, and system concepts for a proposed system or activity.

• Examples: Technology, Financial (Investment) , Personal.. etc

• (Unix Mail Server replacement, Network upgrading, Corporate takeovers, Running for Office ..)

• EXAMPLE: feasibility of installing a 10 MW wind farm in a small village near Hasting in Kent. The client has given me one week to produce a report that she can take to investors.

Client Brief

• Dear Goran,I am meeting a client in a week’s time who is interested in funding a green energy development project to construct a wind farm in Kent. When I meet with her, I should like to have a preliminary feasibility study of such an enterprise, which I hope will interest her enough to fund a full study. Could I ask you to prepare a feasibility report, and also a short PowerPoint presentation for me to take to the meeting?I am sorry that this is short notice, but if we can manage to interest her, I am assured that we will be engaged as consulting engineers on the project.

• Your sincerely•  • Managing Director

Preliminary Schedule: Gantt ChartTime resource= 7 Days

Report Preparation Tips:

• Abstract - less than one page written when you have completed the project.

• Note: In my view an abstract should summarise in about 3 paragraphs the following points,

• 1.      What are you doing?• 2.      How you are doing it?• 3.      What have you done?

• Tells the reader what they can expect to find in the report

1. Introduction

• set the scene. Why are you doing the research? What is it for?• Consider the following: • · Give the background to what other people have done in the

same general area.• ·  Was what they did useful or could it have been better?• ·  Is the research you are doing going to make it more useful or

add to the general understanding of the topic?• ·  You need to number the references.• ·  Be as concise as possible and Stick to the project feasibility

theme.• ·  You need to summarise the introduction in a short paragraph

at the end with a few key points.

2. Experimental

• In this section you need to describe exactly what you have done.

• ·   describe the equipment• ·   describe the experimental procedure• · give details of e.g. powder preparation, disc manufacture,

sintering etc• ·  describe the measurements of whatever properties  you

have measured• ·  You need to summarise the chapter with the key points• ·  Don’t do more than you have to.• · Only include experimental results which are relevant.• · Don’t forget that experiments which go wrong can be

important too!

3 Results and Discussion

In this section you need to analyse all the data you have taken in the experiments.

•   You need to present the data carefully in tables and in graphs.•   You must become familiar with graph plotting packages such as Excel

as soon as possible as you will definitely need to use graphs.•   You will need to understand how to analyse the data using statistical

methods.•  These include techniques such as mean, standard deviation,

coefficient of variation and linear regression.•   For comparing samples you need to understand how to test for

significance between sample means using the t-test.•   If you use correlation coefficients etc you need to understand how to

test for the significance of the correlation coefficient.

4 Conclusions.

• This section is short.  Maybe a page or two and it summarises the key findings.

•   You can number the conclusions if you want to.• Talk specifically about Aims and Objectives! Have

they been satisfied?• Summarise relevant Result findings.• Identify any Planning Issues such as revisions and

Milestones• State Success/Failure of important aspects (if any)•   You should include a section on suggestions for

future work.

5 Project Plan

Weeks 0-2 3-4 5-6 7-8 9-10 11-12

Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

Task 4

Task 5

Task 6

Milestones M1 M2 M3

Tasks: 1. Literature review 2……Etc to 5, 6. Writing up

• 6 Appendix• Insert any software or other information such as data

tables not included in the text of the thesis in appendices.

• 7 References • The format of the references is VERY IMPORTANT.

Appendix and References

Plagiarism? • A very interesting article to read on this subject is the paper by

Yujeung Ho, which considers the contribution of high technology industry to regional economic growth.

http://www.kapa21.or.kr/down/2007/IRPA/4.pdf

This paper concludes that there is a statistically significant and positive effect of high technology industry on regional economic growth. Additionally, the author reports that the regional economic structure varies by the size and the economic activities within the region.

Thus, it is recommended that rather than simply supporting any high-technology industry the aim should be to support the specific high technology industry, which could result in the subsequent regional economic growth.

Exercises

• 1.1           What is a feasibility study? Give some examples of feasibility studies that you may wish to pursue.

• 1.2           What are the major sections of a typical feasibility report?

• 1.3           Describe the general structure of a Gantt Chart and the type of information that it contains. Why are milestones important in Gantt Charts?

• What is plagiarism? If you find an interesting article in a book, how do you report on it?