1. Project management

Subject title Project management

Purpose of the activity To acquaint participants with project management methods.

Duration From 2 hours to a month (there may be a longer period of time required to complete the practical task).

Location and tools Computers or telephones, writing tools, projectors, whiteboard, sticky notes, chairs, tables.

Number of participants 5–20 participants

Acquaintance/ team building methods The training leader creates a tasks’ performance process board (mentioned in the theoretical part), on which in the section “To Do List” he/she affixes sticky notes with several different tasks, for example, to talk to three passers-by, to water flowers, to wash dishes, to find information on the Internet, to make sure there is water in the space, to take care of a coffee break and so on. Participants are invited to introduce themselves and choose which of the tasks mentioned in the sticky notes they would like to focus on, and to write their name on the appropriate sticky note. While the tasks are being completed, the sticky notes are moved to the “In progress” and “Completed” sections.

Practical tasks This visual presentation of the task completion process has many advantages: at any moment it is possible to see what is going on, what is being done, what has been done and how many tasks remain to be completed. The approximate number of hours required to complete each task is written down, but only an experienced project manager knows how many hours should be provided for each task. The task of the project manager is to select enough tasks for the first sprint so that the team can complete them, calculate and distribute the tasks so that the participants have enough time to complete this sprint on time. So the work of the project manager is quite complicated as there are still force majeur circumstances. Someone can get sick, the computer can fail and all work can be lost. And in general, there are other similar things that can happen during a project, and the project manager needs to take that into account. Project manager takes into account the risks and, as far as possible, everything that can happen to the project.

End of session reflection methods Participants are invited to choose one of the project management methods – “Flexible” or “Waterfall”, and, based on it, to plan and implement a group initiative or project. Full creative freedom is given – it can be a project to improve services at a school, university or youth centre, an educational program, a social initiative, a product and anything else. It would be great if participants could devote at least a week, and perhaps even more time, to the task. They could then experience all parts of the chosen project management method. Participants are also invited to create and use in the team the tasks’ performance board mentioned in the theoretical information section.

Notes to the leader Following the implementation of the initiative, participants are invited to reflect on what personal skills they have strengthened, what challenges they have faced and how they have managed to overcome them, both as a team and individually. Participants are also invited to share how they managed to use the tasks’ performance monitoring board.

THEORETICAL INFORMATION

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The ability to manage projects today is critically needed in all areas. This applies not only to professional activities, but also to the organization of your personal life in general. We will consider two approaches to any project management, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and understand in which cases to apply which approach. There are two conceptually different models of project management: Waterfall and Agile. The names of course convey all the concepts of how it works, but we will figure it out in more detail.

Approach to project management Waterfall. For example, you have point A, the beginning of the project, and point B, the end of the project. In the Waterfall project management model, you do everything in stages, completing fully each stage. For example, you are building a website. First, business analysis is done, then design, followed by site layout and programming, and then testing. This is a fully direct step-by-step way of managing and implementing projects. It has been used quite often and for a long time. In this case, you already know in the beginning what the result of the project should be, you have a clearly developed plan which is divided into tasks. The next task is performed only after the previous one is completed.

What are the disadvantages? Let’s imagine that you have an idea for a project and it seems to you that everyone really needs the project and will definitely make a profit. You begin to make it from start to finish and bring it to the perfect solution, you launch it on the market and expect that the created product will start to make a profit. But for some reason that doesn’t happen. Then you think that something else needs to be done and then it will definitely work. And here again there is a possibility that nobody needs the project, or doesn’t need it as it is at the moment. You have wasted time, money, team resources to create a project that nobody needs.

That is why flexible approach, or agile project management, is now being applied to project management. To put it very simply, the essence of this approach is to do the project in small iterations (sprints), where at the end of each we get the finished product in its minimal version. That is, after a certain period of time, for example, every month we will release a working model of this product and check how it works. A sprint is the amount of time it takes to create one workable version of your product. As a rule, this is 2–3 weeks. We plan what we want to do during this time, make a list of tasks and do it. Here the project goes through several stages:

1. Planning. We need to determine what specific tasks we will perform in the current sprint, determine how long it takes to complete each task, and set the priority of these tasks.

2. Direct development. At this stage, we carry out the planned tasks to the extent that we determined at the planning stage. 3. Next comes the testing stage. It would be great to collect user feedback. Give a product to try, test it yourself and collect a list of improvements that need to be implemented in order for the product or project to develop.

4. Retrospective. At this stage, the team gathers and, based on the feedback received, discusses how the product can be improved.

And then the next sprint follows the same pattern. Planning new improvements, implementation, testing, retrospective.

Testing

Retrospective Sprint 1

Planning

Development Testing

Retrospective Sprint 2

Planning

Development Testing

Retrospective Sprint 3

Planning

Development Testing

Retrospective Sprint 4

Planning

Development

For example, you want a site to sell something, instead of paying $20,000 to $30,000 right away for that site, you make its first minimal version. Keep it as minimal as possible to test if this product works. You do all the same things: design, layout, and programming, but to such a small extent that guarantees this product is finished at this stage. It may have a bad design, or it may even be a white picture with markup, it may not have an adaptive layout, which means it does not adapt to the mobile screen, there may be some ready-made scripts that are not programmed, but are connected, i.e. this first version should require from you minimal resources, both financially and timewise. And most important of all, you go and test the idea. You figured out that it would work, and you go to your users and say, there is an MVP, that’s what they say about a product with minimal features, but through which you can test how this product works. You make this MVP and you go to the user. Users test and say: “Look, the idea is great, but it lacks this, but if it were so-and-so, it would be better.” You write down all feedback from users and start planning for the second stage, so you are already planning tasks for the second sprint that could improve your product. You finish it. And then you do the same thing: you go to your users and test this version of the product. Users test again, give you feedback, and you improve the product again. And this cycle can be endless, depending on what your budget is and at what point in this whole long process you start earning on this product and investing in its further development.

This Agile model is flexible. And we recommend using it both in personal life and in professional activity. Surely you have noticed that when you want to do something and want to do it absolutely perfectly or are, for example, waiting for that perfect moment. I am going to be fluent in English, but that moment doesn’t seem to arrive. And it is very difficult for everything to come together at one point, for everything to be perfect. Therefore, this is the art of small steps: you take the minimal first step and see what happens. But there are times when Agile won’t work. For example, when you want to build an airplane. Here you can’t build a hull from some simple material, and not to take a very good and high-quality engine because we need to check whether the plane is going to fly or not. Of course, we will not build an airplane or rockets using Agile. This is already pure Waterfall, where everything goes in stages, until it is done, so you can’t go on to this.

Flexible approaches to project management bring a huge number of advantages:

• you make a product based on user needs and constantly check the relevance of your idea

• both financial and time costs for product development are reduced

• the whole team is involved in making decisions on the further development of the product.

Now we will take a closer look at the interaction of the team with each other when conducting an Agile project. In order to constantly update the current state of the project and to maintain the team’s enthusiasm, daily meetings (stand-ups) are held. These meetings are hold standing up for a small amount of time. At these meetings, each member of the team answers 3 questions:

1. What have I done to achieve the result (what task have I completed)?

2. What am I going to do today?

3. What did not work for me or what prevented me from achieving the planned result?

This allows the team to always understand at what stage the project is, as well as to jointly solve the issues/ problems that arose during the implementation of the project.

In addition, for clarity, a special board is used. It can be done on a large board in the classroom, or using online tools (for example, trello.com)

Let’s take a simplified look at the board.

Backlog tasks In Progress Done

3

5 4 2 1

First column: backlog tasks. This is a list of tasks for the sprint. We write them on separate stickers, on which we also write the planned number of hours. All stickers are placed in the first column. Then all project participants choose their own tasks, write their name on the sticker and move the sticker to the second column (In Progress). This means that work is underway on these tasks. As soon as the work is completed, the sticker is moved to the Done column and the person again chooses the next task for herself or himself. The idea is for one person to have only one task at a time. It’s very visual. At any moment we see what is in progress, what is being done, what has been done and how much is left in the backlog of these tasks. And an approximate number of hours is still written for each task, but it is the project manager with experience who knows how many hours to schedule for a task. And now the task of the project manager is to create as many tasks for the first sprint as the team can complete, calculate and distribute the work so that the team has time to complete this sprint on time. This is the difficulty of a project manager’s work, among other things, because there are force majeure factors. Someone can get sick, the computer can break down and then all the work disappears. In general, there are such things that really happen with projects and the project manager needs to take all this into account. The project manager takes into account the risks, as much as possible everything that can happen to the project.