Project Management DEFINITION Planning organizing and managing resources

Project Management

DEFINITION Planning, organizing, and managing resources to successfully complete a project • Creating timelines to meet required deliverables • Checks and Balances among teams • Record of milestones and how milestones were achieved • Documenting the process

SUCCESSFUL PLANNING Detailed short-term planning Broad long-term planning requiring the plans to be revisited as the project progresses

PLANNING USING AN EXCEL TIMELINE SPREADSHEET Use any version of Excel to make timelines and planning for the sub systems As teachers each subsystem should have certain deliverables to you as well for the sake of the whole project Free online Gantt Chart project planning software is also available (e. g. Tom’s Planner – www. tomsplanner. com)

PROJECT DIVISION INTO SUB TEAMS Evaluate the Experimental Design and Project Overview Determine how the experiment could be broken into different sub categories • Plant Growth: Plant Physiology, Mechanical, Electrical, Water System, Microcontroller Give a mission and purpose to each sub-team Assign deliverables for that team Develop roles for each team member Arrange weekly grades or meetings to determine if they are on task

BENEFITS OF SUB TEAMS Shared workload Chances of leadership and personal satisfaction A sense of belonging to a successful process The ability to accomplish more than if work is performed independently

COMMUNICATION Using the Engineering Notebook Engaging in sub team discussions Having total team discussions Meeting deliverable timeline

TEAM ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Recorder: Someone primarily responsible for the note taking (others will also transcribe information to their own notebooks) Designer: Responsible for sketches and drawings Procedure Developer: Designs the Procedures to use during testing Data collector: Decides how the data should be collected and uses charts, tables, and graphs to collect the data Data Analysis: Once data is collected, then it is analyzed Communicator: Present findings to the larger group

MORE TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES Prototype Planner Prototype Construction Portfolio Developer **All Projects may vary on the roles and responsibilities and can be expanded or combined in any way that serves the class more appropriately. **