Introductory description

Within your research career, you are likely to have to organise, analyse and present an enormous amount of information. You will also have to manage your time, set goals and review progress and probably encourage others to do the same. This set of skills is often placed under the heading of "Project Management" and is highly sought after by employers.

Regardless of whether your research degree is based in a multinational team collecting data, or if you are evolving an idea by yourself, this course is designed to be useful for you both now and in your future career. It will equip you with professional applied project management skills and an overview of various planning techniques to give you the confidence to tackle the issues and situations that arise in a long-term piece of research. It also consists of training in project management software.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Introduction to project management
Project definition
Project organization
Stakeholder management
Time planning
Financial planning and control
Risk management
Project completion and review

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Critically appraise various project management principles
• Define aims and objectives of a project and how they will be evaluated
• Follow project progress through a system for planning and control
• Identify and classify project stakeholders
• Review the people issues of a project in a structured way
• Understand how to prepare a project budget and manage a project financially
• Identify and characterise risks and design strategies for managing them

Indicative reading list

Reading lists can be found in Talis

Interdisciplinary

Communicating across disciplines with module participants from different SEM department

Subject specific skills

• critically appraise various project management principles
• define aims and objectives of a project and how they will be evaluated
• follow project progress through a system for planning and control
• identify and classify project stakeholders
• review the people issues of a project in a structured way
• understand how to prepare a project budget and manage a project financially
• identify and characterise risks and design strategies for managing them

Transferable skills

Students will be able to participate in and/or lead projects and project teams, and use a variety of project management tools and frameworks to meet the challenges that arise, including:

• Stakeholder management
• Time planning
• Financial planning and control
• Risk management
• Project completion and review