scholarly journals The Development Of A Diagnostic ‘Project Management Culture’ Assessment Tool (Part 2)

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvonne Du Plessis ◽  
Crystal Hoole
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Diagnostic Instrument ◽  
Management Approach ◽  
Cronbach Alpha ◽  
Management Culture ◽  
Overall Reliability

The growing interest in project management as a management approach requires organisations to adopt an operational culture that supports project management principles and practices. The availability of an empirically developed assessment tool would enable organisations to assess their present organisational culture's readiness for project work. The aim of this study is to develop a diagnostic instrument that can measure the operational ‘project management culture’ in organisations. The final tool (PMCAT) comprises of a five-factor scale. The overall reliability of the items in this scale was highly acceptable with a Cronbach alpha above 0,70. The tool has a high validity with a inter- item correlation above 0,32.

scholarly journals STUDENT ASSESSMENT IN CAPSTONE DESIGN

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. W. Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Team Work ◽  
Learning Objective ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Teaching Faculty ◽  
Capstone Design Courses ◽  
Foregone Conclusion ◽  
Capstone Design

To ensure that the graduates of engineering schools in Canada have appropriate background in engineering design, the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) [2] specifies that every engineering program should provide students with a significant design experience based on the knowledge and skills acquired in earlier course work, and give students an exposure to the concepts of team work and project management. Typically, these “capstone design” courses are inquiry-based learning [3] courses that involve considerable hands-on project work by student teams. As well, many capstone design courses also include classroom instruction on design methodology, design theory, and project management. The open-ended nature of the capstone design course sets it apart from other courses in the engineering curriculum, but also presents a number of challenges to teaching faculty, the foremost being assessment. When designing an assessment tool for any course, it is important to match the assessment tool with the learning objectives for the assessment [1, 5]. In this way, the instructor can determine the extent to which students have achieved the learning objective, and ideally, the learning objective can be reinforced for the student (e.g., via feedback within the assessment). Given the nature of capstone design courses however, the design of student assessments can be a challenge. In particular, capstone design course instructors face the challenge of coordinating multiple student projects: each of which involves a separate student group and faculty “project advisor” or “coach”. The instructor must develop assessment tools that facilitate consistent assessment across multiple projects, multiple teams, and multiple assessors. Additionally, these tools must be appropriate for the typical range of student deliverables for capstone design courses: e.g., reports, presentations, reviews, written assignments, and/or prototypes. Given these challenges one might ask, why assess project work at all? For example, in most capstone design courses the “project advisor” or “coach” and in some cases the project sponsor or “customer” serve as the examiners. Each of these individuals typically has intimate knowledge of the project and the team’s performance and could make a good argument that the team’s result is a foregone conclusion. As Powell notes [6], there are a number of substantial challenges to this line of thinking. In particular, it is tricky being facilitator and judge at the same time. To address this, it is common to use a report or series of reports and design reviews for assessment [4]. The key advantage to this approach (over the “foregone conclusion”) is that the student team has the opportunity to defend their decisions and also learn from their mistakes. The challenge to teaching faculty is to create assessment tools that, (1) have clear requirements, (2) are clearly linked to the course objectives, (3) are flexible, and (4) are fair. In this paper we look at the role of classroom assessment in the context of capstone design courses. Examples are provided from the author’s experience teaching a mechanical and manufacturing engineering capstone design course and recommendations are made based on this experience.

scholarly journals Development of a management support tool for stricto sensu graduate programs

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-195
Author(s):  
Ricardo Antônio Câmara ◽  
Emerson Antonio Maccari ◽  
Renato Ribeiro Nogueira Ferraz
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Evaluation System ◽  
Graduate Programs ◽  
Monitoring And Evaluation ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Management Approach ◽  
Management Support ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Support Tool

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contribution of a project management approach to develop a tool to support the management of Brazilian stricto sensu graduate programs (SS-GP). The Adaptive approach was chosen by applying the Project Management Life Cycle (PMLC) method. Design/methodology/approach The study corresponds to the concept of applied research. The qualitative approach was used. The research strategy was the action research, where participants cooperate to understand their environment, identify problems and seek a solution, simultaneously producing and using the knowledge produced. Findings The results showed one possible way to apply a contingency project management approach to develop the tool. In addition, indicated that its application facilitated the project work, especially when finding a solution for the project’s development and when dealing with the changes inherent to the uncertainties about the problem. Research limitations/implications The lack of more updated information and the limitation of time and resources led to the reduction of the environment scope and of the number of functionalities developed. Practical implications To contribute to the generation of knowledge and expertise to support the management of SS-GP in activities such as providing information to the CAPES evaluation system, academic production analysis, collaborative researcher network analysis and post-graduation program monitoring and evaluation. Originality/value To fill a gap pointed out by several studies, that it is not possible to automatically generate input lists to be processed by ScriptSucupira tool, based on filtered criteria, comprising the entire universe of the Brazilian SS-PG. The creators of ScriptSucupira also declared to ignore the existence of an artifact similar to that.

scholarly journals An Operational ’Project Management Culture’ Framework (Part 1)

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvonne Du Plessis ◽  
Crystal Hoole
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Organisational Culture ◽  
Project Managers ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Survey Questionnaire ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Management Culture ◽  
Project Environment ◽  
Mapping Process ◽  
Definition Of

The aim of this research is to develop an operational ‘project management culture’ framework, which can be used by project managers and organisations to support project work. One of the main causes of project failure is attributed to a non-supportive project management culture in organisations. A triangulation method is followed inclusive of a thorough literature review, a survey questionnaire and a concept mapping process. A project management culture framework with descriptive elements, based on Deal and Kennedy’s (1982) definition of organisational culture, comprising of four dimensions i.e. project process; people in projects; project systems and structure, and project environment was developed.

scholarly journals Managing an Integrated Project - Experiences from the Realigning Agriculture to Improve Nutrition project

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 5035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Matturi ◽  
Chris Pain
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
International Development ◽  
Project Manager ◽  
Management Approach ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Donor Funding ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Common Goals ◽  
Integrated Project

Over the last number of decades there has been a tendency within the international development sector to privilege the management of projects in a siloed manner. This translates to projects managed in a narrow way according to pre-defined parameters of say the education or health sectors. As a project manager you are held accountable for delivering education or health outputs. A shift in donor funding to focus on development projects that are considered easy to administer partly explains this siloed approach to project management within the development sector. However, there is a gradual kick back against the siloed project management approach. Instead we are seeing a return to an integrated managerial approach.An integrated managerial approach involves bringing together various technical specialists to work on common objectives in a coordinated and collaborative manner. A growing number of development actors such as Concern Worldwide are embracing this ‘new approach’. For Concern Worldwide integrated projects are interventions which address multiple needs through coordination across a variety of sectors and with the participation of all relevant stakeholders to achieve common goals. Integrated projects are about sector projects working together with the same target group in the same area in a coordinated manner. This paper reflects on Concern’s experience and evidence to date with integration drawing on the agency’s work in Zambia. The Realigning Agriculture to Improve Nutrition project in Zambia highlights the practical challenges and lessons of managing an integrated project.   

scholarly journals The bright side of social economy sector’s projectification: a study of successful social enterprises

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 5043
Author(s):  
Beata Jalocha ◽  
Ewa Bogacz-Wojtanowska
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Long Term Results ◽  
Main Research ◽  
The Creation

In Europe, we are witnessing a growth in the social economy sector, i.e. in socio – economic organizations, which belong neither to the traditional for profit sector (market economy) nor to the public sector (government) (Deforuny, 2001; Young, 2007) - they rather act at the interface of civil society and markets (Jäger, 2010). The main goal of these organizations, called social enterprises or social business, is doing business for socially useful purposes. These initiatives may take the form of traditional Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), like foundations and associations, as well as new kinds of organizations for example social cooperatives, partnerships, funds.Social economy is situated between public and business sphere of administration and combines both, social objectives and the ones profit-oriented. Social entrepreneurship is unquestionably a desirable feature of social economy understood as reaching planned economic objectives with the use of available resources. Another feature comprises in using involvement and creativity of excluded persons and thus, solving social problems, among others, structural unemployment and disadvantage of social minorities as well as strengthening democratic processes, bottom-up social initiatives etc. Achieving objectives, both social and economic, requires using modern management instruments and methods.All of the above mentioned organizations or ventures, which achieve their local, social or ethical mission and goals using methods adopted from the business sector (Defourny, Hulgard, Pestoff, eds.2014). One of these methods is project management. The whole sector of social economy, both in Poland and in Europe, is strongly influenced by projectification process: a lot of the activities are performed in the form of projects. For last ten years projectification of social non-governmental sector as well as the economy sector in Poland was reinforced by EU’s funding stream – hundreds of co-funded projects, which aimed at increasing the level of development and improving the condition of social economy, were implemented. Some of these projects have resulted in the creation of durable, dynamically operating social enterprises, and some of them did not produce any long-term results. In case of successful projects, we can observe an unusual effect of projectification process: the creation of permanent structures, sustainable social economy organizations through the implementation of projects.Although we can identify examples of interesting research on impact of project work on NGOs (Brière, Proulx, Navaro, & Laporte, 2015); Golini, Kalchschmidt, Landoni, 2015) or critical success factors of non-governmental projects (Khang & Moe, 2008), there is a research gap which we would like to address in this paper: lack of research on project management best practices in social enterprises. Thus, the main research question we would like to investigate in the paper is: What are the factors that lead to creation of durable, permanent social economy enterprises from projects?This paper draws on set of qualitative data from broader research on social economy sector conducted in Poland in years 2011-2013 by researchers from the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). For the purpose of this paper we have conducted multiple case study analysis and analysed 36 case studies of existing social enterprises. One of our research goals was to find out, which factors are critical in the process of creation durable social enterprises from projects. Also, we wanted to understand how projectification, influenced strongly by the EU policies, changes the landscape of social enterprises in Poland and helps them achieve success.

scholarly journals Can Serious Games Improve Project Management Decision Making Under Complexity?

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rumeser ◽  
Margaret Emsley
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Project Management ◽  
Performance Improvement ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Serious Games ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Management Decision ◽  
Project Complexity ◽  
Management Decision Making ◽  
Management Games

The existing literature on project management serious games tends to ignore the effect of project complexity levels on decision-making performance. This research fills this gap by conducting an experiment whereby two similar project management games with different complexity levels were applied. Our findings suggest that these games can improve players’ decision-making performance both in the less complex and more complex scenarios. We also discover that game complexity levels do not affect teams’ decision-making performance improvement, and that teams with more project work experience tend to improve more than those with less experience in the more complex game.

scholarly journals An Integrated Management Approach in a Higher Education Technology Support Unit

2013 ◽  
pp. 206-228
Author(s):  
Lesley G. Boyd ◽  
Jill W. Fresen
Keyword(s):  
Instructional Design ◽  
Project Management ◽  
Quality Management ◽  
Quality Management System ◽  
Integrated Management ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Management Approach ◽  
Design Development ◽  
Support Unit ◽  
Instructional Design Process

This case study is located in the Department for Education Innovation (EI), a teaching and learning support unit at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The initial problem was the need to apply project management and quality management principles to the services offered by the department to faculty members. The authors describe the implementation of a formal, online, process-based Quality Management System (QMS) designed to self evaluate, document, and improve the Instructional Design (ID) process that guides the development of educational technology solutions in EI. The project was completed in 2005 and was included in a CEN (European Committee for Standardization) Good Practice Guide for outstanding implementations of quality approaches in e-learning. The QMS provides a mechanism to support a consistent project management approach, and the case illustrates successful integration between three cycles: Project Management (PM), Quality Management (QM), and the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) instructional design process.

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