Better learning & teaching projects

MOOCs

paul mayes — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:16:13 +0000

Two free MOOCs are now available to staff or students wishing to impove their project management skills. Sadly the next running of the Alfred State College of Technology (starting 20th May) is full. Details are at https://www.canvas.net/courses/project-management-for-business-professionals. The Saylor.org course (described at http://www.saylor.org/courses/bus402/) allows you to register at any time. My clients recommend both courses

Project charter

paul mayes — Sun, 12 May 2013 15:54:17 +0000

Back in 2010 I blogged about using project charter templates from Ohio State University and the University of Saskatchewan as a formal statement of the scope of a project (see http://betterprojects.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2010/07/07/project-charters/). Since then I have used another template a lot with clients. This was written by Bob Guthrie at the University of Notre Dame. I have checked with Bob that the version at http://www.uaa.edu/esp/uploads/file/ciencias/University_of_Notre_Dame_Project_Charter.pdf is still the latest.

Project outcomes

paul mayes — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:39:29 +0000

Now that I have a break from a lot of academic quality work, I am updating some of my material on project benefits. I was pleased to see that an excellent public paper on measuring project outcomes is still available for me to point clients to as part of the background reading. The paper can be found using this link

Stakeholder impact

paul mayes — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:41:08 +0000

Another interesting piece of work at present – producing an process for looking at and dealing with the impact of a project on stakeholders. The best publicly available template for helping with this is at http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/hr/project/templates/index.html amongst a collection of other very useful project material

Storytelling

paul mayes — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:59:26 +0000

There have been a couple of recent instances when I have heard of project proposers being required to use a storytelling format to explain their ideas. This took me back to my days in 2009 as a member of the JISC Emerge community of practice and watching a presentation about the Reflect 2.0 digital storytelling project at the University of Leeds (see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/usersandinnovation/reflect.aspx). If you are called upon to use storytelling (or the TED approach) in your project development, there is an excellent March 2013 article at http://www.pm4girls.elizabeth-harrin.com/2013/03/storytelling-a-key-competence-for-project-managers/

Project terms of reference and BOSCARD

paul mayes — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 16:48:58 +0000

I have recently helped a project team to set out their term of reference and, as always, I used the BOSCARD approach rather than an over-detailed project initiation document (PID). Then I realsied I had not mentioned BOSCARD in any of the previous 279 posts in this blog. You can get an excellent description of BOSCARd (and a link to a downloadable template) at http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/boscard.html

Action project template

paul mayes — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 20:08:55 +0000

Twelve months back I blogged (at http://betterprojects.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2012/03/19/template/) about using an AQIP Action Project Template. Some recent work has meant that I have used another such template, this time from Madison College. It would be most useful for any college wanting to structure its own small project. It’s viewable at http://intranet.madisoncollege.edu/forms-db/forms/ActionProject2CICulture.pdf

Project based learning

paul mayes — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:53:42 +0000

If (like me recently) you are using a lot of project based learning, there is a very good table produced by Amy Meyer that summarises why is it so different from just setting projects to students. A Google doc version of the table is available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/17Cfgl7mThQzpa5KoBCW-58oUwbZuF9Vy7Ij7yOddtDY/edit

Project Board

paul mayes — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:24:15 +0000

In amongst various college learning & teaching work at present, I have also been advising on setting up a Project Board for a collaborative project. If you ever need to do this, there is a very good section of the JISC InfoKit site at http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/project-management/key-roles/project-board/

Post project review facilitating

paul mayes — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 20:36:44 +0000

This last week I have been doing some facilitating for a post-project review. If you wish to try this then the Imperial College template at https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/capitalprojects/Public/Procedure_Forms/PP05PPRReviewProcess.pdf is available for public access