Project+Management

This article is about how to approach a project that is in a dynamic environment, meaning that it is constantly changing. This projects always incorporate experimentation, leadership, planning, and flexibility into their management plans. Our freshman imaging project is highly dynamic due to the constant flow of students in and out of the class, the experimentation involved in the project, and uncertainty of how the class will run, the uncertainty of our results, etc. Because of this, this article gives us good ideas on how to go about planing for the year. The article presents many ways to try and manage the dynamic environment. Some of the few that most directly relate to our project is to not waste too much time trying to plan far in advance, to break the project into stages to reduce the appearance of size, to re-plan after testing, to monitor the process, to have some type of leadership, and to have an interactive discussion. All these elements can be incorporated into a personalized plan to help this project be successful. This article is about choosing the right management method for your project. He explains two extremes of this methodology world. One is the waterfall method which is a fairly linear approach which flows as follows; analysis, design, development, testing, and deployment. This approach is the oldest and its origins are in the engineering world. The other is agile development, which is most commonly found in the information technology world. This approach uses short iterations with lots of feedback after each stage to gain results. VanDerSchouw explains how these are only two methods though, and most likely one will not fit to your project type. The best way to decide the best management approach possible it so have a “kick-off” meeting with the senior managing staff and some sponsors to talk about the best ways to get the work done within the required time and budget. He also provides a short list of questions to help you start analyzing. This made me think about how we can find many examples online but we have to analyze our requirements, our time, our external consultants, our experience level, the size of our team and how we’ve decided to organize the people within our team. Our way of managing our team should be custom to get the best results.
 * Maggie Castle**
 * [[file:project management approaches for dynamic environemnts article.pdf]]
 * [[file:Choose the right project management method.pdf]]

These article deals with what kinds of qualities a project manager needs. Specifically, The first one identifies specific qualities. First it looks at the human skill, conceptual and organizational skill, and technical skill. The most important skill area voted on by project managers was human skill. It includes communication, delegating authority, coping with situations, and mobilizing. The next most important section was conceptual and organizational skills. This section included planning and organizing ideas. Voted least important was technical skill. The articles make the point that the technical side of a project is helped by the leading and management techniques.
 * Dan Goldberg**
 * [[file:Advancing project management in learning organizations.pdf]]
 * [[file:The skills and career path of an effective project manager.pdf]]

= Nadya Spice = The "Project Management Review" file focuses on key skills and personality traits that are necessary for someone to be a qualified project manager. The authors throw around the terms responsibility, accountability, and authority, claiming that without these traits in a leader, the project will become confusing. They address flexibility as a key component to a project, although the degree of flexibility could differ from project to project. A project leader needs to be able to address possible issues before they occur and how they will be dealt with. The two types of project management that this article focuses on are process based and goal-directed. Process based project management uses a system that starts with inputs such as documents, plans, and designs. Then tools and techniques are used to carryout the inputs, and finally you get an output. Goal-directed project management is used to focus the team members' attention and effort toward the finished product, and less on how the management methods are being distributed. This could help us choose a path that we would like to exhibit as our project management technique. This article helped to point out things that team leaders need to keep in mind when managing issues. This article pointed out 4 steps that each project needs to go through, which the project manager should organize. Step one is a "defining stage" during which goals are specified. Step two is a "planning stage" where issues such as who does what, risk management, and communication are planned. Step 3 is the "executing stage" during which the project is worked on. Step four is "termination" stage in which the team assesses the completed project. This process is very similar to the one we are undergoing, and therefore this article could help us to address issues that we might not know how to deal with.
 * [[file:Project Management Review.pdf]]
 * [[file:Management Education.pdf]]

To read more content about event project management then checkout [|online project planning].