How To: Project management
New first year students are juggling so much: multiple courses, a new city, new roommates, laundry (if we’re lucky), being on their own, and being asked to do things that, in high school and at home, they had a lot of help with, or didn’t even have to do at all (see “laundry”).
Many students will not have learned the skills of time and project management and will need help learning how to plan for a larger project – or even a small one like writing a simple paper. Helping students break down an assignment into discrete actions and estimating the time needed for each will help them see what they need to do – and will reduce the stress they feel.
Telling students how you approach similar activities – and the pitfalls you’ve encountered – will also help them see that they can do it. What did you try that didn’t work? Telling students how you approach the work that you do, even telling them how you plan for class, will help them see the value of thinking through the steps they’ll need to take to be successful.
For Students
If you have a big assignment – or even a smaller one like writing a short paper or reflection – coming up, project management is about planning out the actions you need to take and then staying on top of it. It means thinking through the steps you’ll need to take to make sure you’re moving forward and toward completing the assignment. Good time management skills are really important to keep you on track.
- Keep a calendar: whether a physical planner (there are some really cute ones!), Apple, Google or other calendar app, physical sticky notes, a reminder app, a task management app, or a combination of tools.
- Use the calendar: put your class schedule and due dates into whatever you’re using.
- For each larger assignment like a final project, make a plan. Think through the steps you’ll need to follow to get to the finished project; for example, do you need to do some research first? When will you do that, how much will you have to do, where will you have to do it, and how much time will you need? After the research, are you designing a prototype, making a model, writing a paper, drawing a series of images? What are the steps you’ll need to follow to do that and how much time will you need? Breaking the project into smaller, intermediate steps will help you see the timeline and the roadmap for how you’ll get to the completed project.
- Set intermediate deadlines for yourself. Once you’ve identified the steps you need to follow, make deadlines for yourself and put them into your calendar. – and even put reminder dates earlier in your calendar so they don’t sneak up on you. Plot reminder alerts in advance so you remember to start your assignments and complete them on time. Task management apps are great for this.
- Create self-accountability. Ask a friend or study partner that you check in with regularly to ask how you’re getting along. It’s embarrassing to say you haven’t started yet or haven’t worked on it in a while….
- Make checklists for each of the steps you identified, how long you think you’ll need to do it, and the intermediate deadlines you set for yourself. It feels really good to check off what you’ve done at each step of the way and it’s a visual representation of what you’ve accomplished along the way.
If you’re struggling
- Talk to your professor; they want you to succeed.
- Use the University Learning Center