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| Good
Practice in Project Management |
| by Melanie Smallman, Director,
Think-Lab Limited |
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| Summary |
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| If you’re involved in science communication
activities or are a scientist, you probably manage projects
on a day to day basis. In this document, Melanie Smallman provides
guidance on how to manage any project efficiently and successfully,
to get the best results from your project. |
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| 1.
Introduction |
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If you’re involved in science communication activities or
are a scientist, you probably manage projects on a day to day basis.
Whether it’s setting up a public meeting or looking after
a series of experiments, if your work has a clear beginning and
end-point, is bounded by time and resources and has clear outcomes,
you are managing projects. You might not call yourself a project
manager and you might not use any formal system of project management,
but that’s what you are.
At Think-Lab, we have been managing science communication projects
for more than ten years, and over the next few pages, we will share
some of the lessons we’ve learned and show you some techniques
from project management that can help your projects be more successful
and help you sleep at night!
We won’t event try to give you a comprehensive guide to project
management however (that would take a whole book and there are some
really good ones already written – see further reading at
the end), but we’ll focus on some of the key points at which
science communication projects often go wrong and explore some techniques
that can help make your projects more successful and help you sleep
at night!
Myth and Worry Number 1: “Project Management techniques
are too rigid and take away any room for flexibility or creativity”
Project Management is not about being inflexible – it’s
just about thinking things through, having strategies for keeping
your eye on all of the balls, controlling what you can control and
understanding and communicating the consequences of any changes
you do make to the project.
Until we can see into the future, no-one will ever be able to plan
for every eventuality. But with a good project plan you can be aware
of potential problems early on and adjust your plans to minimise
the impact of the problems. Good project management can:
- Help ensure your project is a success
- Save you time and money
- Keep you sane.
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| 2.
Five Step Project Management
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At Think-Lab we work with the five step approach to project management,
which means that we think of projects as having five steps of stages
in their lifecycle. We focus on different aspects of the project
depending on which one of these stages a particular project is in:
- Initiation
- At this stage we are considering (and hopefully agreeing) that a project should
be done, defining the objectives and scope of the project, identifying the stakeholders
(all of those with an interest in the project including funders, team members,
users), and clarifying their expectations.
At this point, we also produce a written
statement of works (a project initiation document or PID) which outlines what
we’re
going to do and how, and establishes the ‘rules’ for
the project – details such as who reports to whom and channels
of communication. Importantly, we get agreement of this document
(or relevant parts of this document) amongst all stakeholders.
- 2. Planning
- During the planning stage we break the project down into small
pieces of work or tasks, we work out the sequence in which
these tasks need to be carried out and identify those tasks
which are dependent upon others. From this, we develop a schedule
for the work (often presented as a chart) as well as a budget
and, importantly, get the plan agreed once again by the stakeholders.
- 3. Implementing
- This is where we are (hopefully) getting on with the work, co-ordinating
and guiding the team so that it gets done according to the
plan.
- 4. Controlling
- This part of the cycle is usually simultaneous with the implementing
phase – as project managers we’re watching over
the project, measuring progress towards the agreed objectives
(is it on time and to budget?) and taking the necessary action
to ensure that any deviations from the plan do not have a negative
impact on the end results.
- 5. Project Closing
- This should be a time of celebration (it worked!), reflection,
evaluation and learning from the experience.
If you're thinking of applying for a Copus grant, you're probably
somewhere between stages 1 and 2.
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| 3.
Successful Projects |
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For a project to be successful, all you need to do is produce what
you agreed to produce, on time and within budget, using the resources
planned.
Sounds easy, so why do so many projects go wrong? Typical reasons
for projects going wrong are:
- There wasn’t enough time
- There wasn’t enough money/people/resources
- The products/end results weren’t quite what was expected because
a) the objectives of the project weren’t specific enough or understood
by all stakeholders or b) because changes to the specification
were made during the course of the project and not communicated
and agreed upon by all stakeholders
From these, you should be able to see straightforward steps that you can take
at the start of a project that may be time-consuming in the early
days, but will put the project on solid foundations:
- Clearly articulate the objectives and outcomes of the project and get them agreed by all stakeholders
- Plan the project, breakdown tasks and work out a realistic resource and budget plan
- Consider risks and make a ‘Plan B’
- Get support from project funders/hosts to ensure sufficient money and resources (including staff time)
Importantly, while the project is in action, it is vital that you communicate
with all stakeholders to ensure their expectations are in tune.
Myth and Worry number 2: "I need complicated and expensive
project management software to plan and manage my projects"
Project management software can help you chart your project and
progress more easily, and is very good at highlighting potential
problems, but it only works if you have thought things through and
planned the project properly. With or without software, there are
no shortcuts to the thinking and planning or a project and, if you
pay enough attention to that stage, there is absolutely no reason
why you can't manage a project just as effectively on paper.
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| 4.
Things to remember for your grant application |
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| 4.1
Objectives |
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The objectives of a project are important obviously because
this is how the project team know what to do. They are also
how the stakeholders (including funders and customers) know
what to expect from the project. Finally, often forgotten,
they’re important because they enable us to measure whether
the project has been a success or not.
Clearly then, when you are planning your project and writing
your grant application, making sure you set the right objectives
is important.
In project management, we say that good objectives are SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Agreed upon (by the stakeholders)
Realistic (can it be done?)
Time limited (when does it end?)
Take the following (fictional) example:
I work for a museum of medicine that is attached to a university.
The majority of our visitors are either from our University,
are visiting our university or are related to someone at our
university. We would like to reach new audiences so we are
planning a quiz in a local pub that doesn’t usually attract
university staff or students.
The objectives of the project are:
- To raise awareness of the history of medicine
- To encourage people outside the university to visit the museum
They seem to be perfectly reasonable objectives until you start to ask whether
they are SMART – what do I mean by raising awareness of the
history of medicine and how will I assess whether I’ve raised
it? What am I going to do, when and how much will it cost?
If no new people come to the museum is it because the quizzes
were unsuccessful or because the museum is not on a bus route,
has no parking spaces, charges £25 for entry and is only open
between 11 and 2 Monday to Thursday?
SMARTER objectives might be:
- To organise three pub quizzes between January and June 2003 for £20,000
- To attract at least 25 participants who do not work at the University to each quiz
- For 75% of the participants to find the event enjoyable
- To attract at least three pieces of media coverage
- For at least 10% of the free entry vouchers handed out at the quizzes to be redeemed at the museum.
Once all of your stakeholders agree them, from these objectives it’s very clear
what you’re going to do and how you’ll tell if you’ve done
well. |
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| 4.2
Evaluation |
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Funders are also very keen to see how you're planning to
measure the success or otherwise of your project - did you
meet your objectives and if not, why not? Having clear and
SMART objectives will be important in evaluating your project
then.
Evaluation is useful not just to satisfy funders, but because
it can help you to learn from your experience so that you
can do it better next time and because it can help others
in your field share the lessons you've learned. Evaluations
can also be useful at the start of the project in shaping
your ideas and providing support and direction for your plans
- front-end or formative evaluation.
So evaluation shouldn't be something that you just think about
at the end of a project. Evaluation will cost you time and
money, so it's important to plan your evaluation strategy
from the beginning so that you can include the resources needed
in your budget plans. It's also useful to have some idea about
what type of information you want for your evaluation and
how and when you're going to collect it - it would have been
annoying if we'd realised at the end of the series of pub
quizzes that we should have asked the ages of all of the participants
for instance.
There are many different tools available to you for evaluating
a project, ranging from formal methods such as questionnaires,
interviews and focus groups to more informal activities such
as video diaries, votes and feedback comments. More details
of the pros and cons of various evaluation tools are given
in the Copus booklet 'So
did it work?', and a summary is provided in the companion
Good Practice article, Effective
Evaluation.
Whichever technique you choose, the key is to make sure that
the method you have chosen is appropriate to your needs -
ask yourself what do you want to know and how much are you
prepared to spend? Include the evaluation strategy and the
necessary resources in your funding application. As a guide,
funding bodies expect to spend somewhere between 5-10% of
the project budget on a good evaluation. |
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| 5.
Think-Lab's Ten Steps to project management heaven |
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- Have clear objectives that are agreed amongst all project stakeholders
- Agree the 'scope' or the project (and don't try and do more)
- Make a plan and use it
- Be prepared to change your plans and maker sure stakeholders agree changes
- Make sure your timetable’s realistic
- Work out what money and resources you need (and make sure you have them)
- Get a great team (and look after them)
- Keep stakeholders up to date with what you're doing
- Think about evaluation from the start
- Learn from your experience
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