Project Based Learning
and why is it required?
Projects are often viewed
as being fundamentally rooted in technology. This is because most projects are
technical. Unfortunately, this orientation toward technology has obscured the
true purpose of projects. The truth is that projects are all about business –
not technology. The fundamental objective for a project is to achieve a
business result, such as improving effectiveness, increasing sales, or making
operations more efficient. No matter what that underlying cause, the ultimate
purpose of a project is very simple: to make money or to save money.
The success or failure of
any project often hinges on how well the project sponsor – the person who funds
the project and ensures that desired benefits are achieved – relates to the
project, the project manager, and other stakeholders. However, executives who
are assigned as project sponsors often have little if any experience
understanding their roles and responsibilities during the project lifecycle.
Problems in communication and execution are inevitable as long as senior
managers and project managers do not understand the mechanics of their
relationship.
Unlike repetitive
functional type work, projects have a clear beginning, middle and end to the
work that must get done. This work is expressed in terms of the life cycle,
consisting of six phases:
Initiate:
This is where we begin –
trying to nail down what this project is about and how it will positively
impact our company. During this initial stage of the project, we must define
the scope of the project – major project objectives and deliverables to be
addressed by the project. As a preliminary step, we might develop and circulate
a Concept Paper to senior leadership, asking them to
approve or deny the justification behind this project. If the Concept Paper is
approved, we might do a formal Business
Case, outlining how this project will meet a critical business need, including
the costs and benefits associated with the project.
If management gives the
green light and agrees to fund the project, then we need to line-up a project
team and formalize the project scope. This is documented through something
called a Project Charter. Project
Charters are the first real document to set a project into motion, authorizing
the project team to move forward and get started. The Project Charter outlines
the major steps and deliverables of the project, including the core team members.
Project Charters are signed by senior level managers who serve as sponsors of
the project.
Plan:
Now that we’ve initiated
the project through a Project Charter, we have to develop a detail project plan
for executing the goals and objectives documented in the Project Charter. In
order to prepare a detail project plan, you start by breaking down the project
scope into activities or work elements. This is accomplished by setting up a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS is a multi-level
structure that breaks all of the project work down into work packages and each
work package has a work product, deliverable, or some milestone that allows us
to measure the output associated with the work package. Once we have organized
all project work into the WBS, we quantify the work in terms of costs (how much
do we expect to spend on each work package) and schedule (how long will it take
us to complete each work package). And if we can accurately assign a measurable
milestone to each work package, the combination of all quantified work packages
(costs, time, and milestones) forms the Performance
Measurement Baseline (PMB). This
is the detail project plan we will use to manage the project going forward.
Execute:
Now that we have a detail
plan in place in the form of a Performance Measurement Baseline, it’s time to
execute – assign the work packages to sub-teams and groups. Most of these
smaller groups will have “subject matter expertise” in different areas. In our
WBS Example for the Banquet, we have cooks, servers, and waiters each assigned to
do different things. Each is a SME (subject matter expert) for getting their
piece of the project done. For large scale projects, we may want to develop and
use some supplemental plans:
Project Management Plan:
Serves as the master planning document for the
project, describing the major activities and processes that must take place,
who will do the work and all key deliverables and work products. Unlike the
Project Charter which is relatively brief and high level in nature, the Project
Management Plan is more comprehensive, providing a road map of how the project
will get done. It often includes several other planning documents, such as the
Quality Control Plan and the Risk Management Plan.
Control:
As we execute our project
plan, we need to regularly review our performance to see how close we are to
our project plan. For control purposes, the project plan is expressed in the
form of a time-phased budget known as the Performance Measurement Baseline. And
as actual costs accumulate, we can monitor progress. For example, if we go back
to the WBS Example – Banquet, at the lowest level (level 3) within our Banquet
WBS, we have everyone (cooks, servers, waiters, etc.) charge their time, apply
an hourly rate to arrive at costs, and compare the actual costs to what’s
planned within the Performance Measurement Baseline. This is how we monitor and
control the project.
Close:
We’ve completed all
deliverables outlined in the PMB and it’s now time to close-out the project.
This can include things like making sure all work products have been delivered
and approved or making sure all of our project files and records are up to
date. In the banquet example, we would make sure everyone has been paid, the
banquet facility is clean and back to normal, and all funds raised by the banquet
have been accounted for.
Basic Overview of the
Project Life Cycle:
Project Quality
Management:
Projects produce lots of
different outputs and products, ranging from a Project Charter and Project Plan
early in the project life cycle to formal software testing and user training
near the end of the life cycle. And all of these work products need to meet an
acceptable level of quality, typically defined by the customer. A Quality
Management Plan is used to communicate how you will go about evaluating and
ensuring what you produce is really high quality. For example, it is usually
necessary to have others review the quality of your work – Team Lead, Project
Manager, or Customer. It is also important to compare your work against
external standards. For example, different associations such as the Software
Engineering Institute (SEI), International Organization for Standardization
(ISO), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) publish
standards which are useful for benchmarking the quality of your work products.
It’s worth noting that a low emphasis on quality will invariably impact project
performance - cost over-runs, behind schedule, and dissatisfied customers. When
you fail to meet or exceed expectations, this requires going back and doing
things over again. So it is important to use a lot of quality control tools in
project management – things like checklists, peer reviews, inspections, audits,
testing, prototype models, and walk through, metrics, variances, and acceptance
criteria. Quality needs to be embedded into everything you do.
Project Based Learning (PBL):
Confucius and Aristotle
were early proponents of learning by doing. Socrates modelled how to learn
through questioning, inquiry and critical thinking. All that remains very
relevant in today’s PBL classrooms. One of the major advantages of project work
is that it makes school more like real life. PBL describes a vision for
education that embraces learning that flows from personal interests, passion
for discovery and a celebration of art, technology, craftsmanship. A project is
meaningful if it fulfils two criteria: first, students must perceive the work
as personally meaningful as a task that matters and they want to do well.
Second, a meaning project fulfils an educational purpose. Well designed and
well implemented project based learning is meaningful in both ways.
A project should give
students opportunities to build skills as collaboration, communication,
critical thinking and the use of technology which will serve them well in the
workplace so this exposure to authentic skills meets the second criteria for meaningful
work an important purpose. In real inquiry, students follow a trial that begins
with their own questions to lead to a search for resources and the discovery of
answers and often ultimately leads to generating new questions, testing ideas
and drawing their own conclusions. With real inquiry comes innovation – a new
answer to driving questions, a new product, or an individually generated
solution to a problem.
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