School of Professional Skills – Project Management

School of Professional Skills Lecture 4, Project Management

I did a project management unit as part of my photography degree last year and found it somewhat interesting, I expected the basics to be the same but this lecture to be more academic and workplace based and it was.

Project Management – The process of ensuring a goal is achieved

ProcessInitiate (what) -> Plan (how long and how much) <=> Execute (implement and adjust) -> Close (how did we do)

Most Problems are created in initiation stage and discovered in execute stage

Your customers are the people/organisation with an unmet need or problem. Know who your customers are because if you do not meet their need then your project will be judged a failure.

Understand the customers problem, a project is a unique task designed to attain a specific result limited in time and requiring specific resources

Deliverable

1. A tangible output of the project
2. Leads to the resolution of the customers problem
3. Measured on completion
4. In order to be measured the deliverable must be well designed

Benefit -A desired outcome of the project measured after completion of the project

Deliverables are not the same as benefits.

Project Charter – Essential tool, a short document created early on in the project that provides a high level of definition of the project.

1. Why the project is being undertaken the business case
2. What the deliverables are
3. The expected benefits
4. What the contributions are
5. Who the project sponsors

Project definition document

1. Business case
2. Overview of approach
3. Deliverables
4. Assumptions
5. Stakeholders

Factors of Success = Time/Cost/Scope – If one of these in inflexible then the others have to be flexible i.e. if there is a set in stone time limit then if a problem arises there may be a higher expense

For each task you must ask yourself, ‘What tasks will have to be completed before I can complete my task?’ Estimate time and sequence then create a plan called a Gantt Chart. A Gantt chart is the most common project plan form and was developed by Henry Gantt (Example not from lecture shown below)

Taken From: http://www.advsofteng.com/gallery_gantt.html (Accessed Sun 12th May 2013)

Another Graph important to project management however is the Critical Chain/Path graph (An example of which is shown below)

Taken From:http://www.pmknowledgecenter.com/node/108 (Accessed Sun 12th May 2013)

The ‘Critical Path’ is shown in red and is such because it is the path that contains the longest series of consecutive tasks in time.

The Critical Chain solution –

1. Take the safety out of individual task time estimates
2. Remove task due date from plans
3. Stop multi – tasking
4. Put in buffers at key points in the plan

Prioritise risk – What could go wrong and what is the probability of it going wrong and impact. Rank based on impact of probability and respond to reduce the risk.

‘Plans’ are useless, ‘planning’ is essential

Three things to track

1. Process – Tasks completed and tasks with problems
2. Action/Time -Activities too small to be on the main schedule
3. Issues – Identified problems that need resolving

When you finish – How well did you do? Tell people what you have/haven’t done

Summary –

• Know exactly what you are trying to do
• Make sure you have a sponsor
• Plan your project and make sure you don’t miss vital tasks or dependencies
• Know your Critical Path

Professional Practice – Photographer Notes – Daniel Alexander

Daniel Alexander is one of my lecturers and decided to give us a lecture on his own work as one of the ‘visiting speakers’. This is the second time he has given a lecture on his work so my notes were brief but here they are anyway, He is an interesting commercial photographer and very passionate about his own work.

He worked with Andrew Haslam on a project called Lettering and Process. He met Haslam when he was a technician and Haslam was a MA Graphic Design lecturer. He said that the project was made possible by digital photography and his tip is when commissioned make sure you get paid for the time you spend developing.

Making Marks is a project on tattoos, simple tattoos the photographs were black and white and developed from the ‘Lettering and Process’ project. It developed from an interest in lettering and looked at the bodies of his subjects as paper with the tattoo as a letter on the page of a book.

Designing the Commonwealth War Graves Mainly took place in France and Belgium. There are different reasons why people visit these cemeteries and graveyards. Some visit to see the graves of family members and some visit as a tourist attraction or historical landmark. This project looked at the commemoration of WWI and WWII casualties and the design process that goes into these graves. He showed us a time lapse he made (also found http://www.danielalexanderphotography.co.uk/portfolio/?page_id=113)  of the ‘Construction of the Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery’ It is very moving and shows a construction process that would not normally be seen.

School of Professional Skills – Social Media

School of Professional Skills lecture 4, Social Media

Making the most of Email for small businesses

Digital Native and Digital Immigrant

Email

Well recorded and legally binding

Speed

Easy

Components of email = username@hostname

.com = commercial

.edu + .ac = education

.org = charity (used to mean)

cc = copy

bcc = blind copy

Email Netiquette – respond quickly, even if just to say i am out of the office and ALWAYS use the subject box, check spelling and grammar and be careful of humour. Always bcc when emailing your customers otherwise you are giving them your address book. reflect the recipients own style and always use a greeting and ending “best regards” along with a signature and disclaimer. Emails have become main means of communication so managing it helps productivity. Emails offer fast communication, Good record keeping, find information faster, feel in control BUT too fast, best thing to do is write it and wait 24 hours.

Online forums like google groups are really good for networking.

London

Yesterday we took a trip to London to go visit “photographic printers, both digital and hand printing and book binders” the trip was an organisational disaster which meant i didn’t manage to go to the hand printing place and the book binding place wasn’t on the schedule and we weren’t able to get there either. The first and only place I went to on this trip was Print Space and it was an interesting place to visit. I found out a lot about different paper types and inks and which photographs work well with different types of photographs. I found it interesting to see and feel but it is very difficult to blog about without making it painfully obvious as to make sense of it you need to be able to see and feel the paper, they do have a sample pack which I have seen and would recommend to anyone interested in buying from them however if you’re going to be ordering prints on a fairly standard paper type I am sure you could find cheaper less pretentious places. The main thing that I found interesting when I was at print space was the photographs on the wall most of which were beautiful meaningful photographs. They were up as part of the competitions which you can enter via their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/theprintspace

We each got a free print when we visited print space which was very good although is was one of the aspects of the day which was endlessly frustrating because the time it took to add the photographs to the computer was not considered when my lecturers planed the day. On the whole the trip to London was not worth the time or money but I may still use print space in the future.

Below are some photographs I took of London in 2011

All Images subject to copyright. Do not reproduce.