Practising Project Management Principles

Students are expected to practise project management principles in every aspect of their coursework and interactions.

• Practise effective communication. Ensure your communications are effective regardless of which medium you use: email, discussion boards, verbal, and phone (if appropriate). Think about how to make your point or pose your question efficiently and clearly and be concise.
• Build your social network and practise "getting along well with others" in all interactions. Try "stepping in others' shoes" and see the project or task at hand from their perspective.
• Practise time management and estimating how long tasks will take. Do this for all of your classes, work, and other non-school activities so you won't have to ask for extensions on assignments.
• Practise setting goals and measuring results against those goals. Determine your priorities and schedule activities that are highest priorities such that they will be completed on time.
• Learn about yourself and how and when (under what conditions) you work best.
• Practise selecting projects that support your personal strategy and goals. In some assignments and exams (in this course and others), you will be given choices as to which questions to answer. This is an opportunity to choose the one that will give you the most opportunity to focus on and think about questions that support your goals.

Hopefully, you will not only take away from this course the principles of project management and how to manage and work on projects more effectively but will also learn how to organization your work in general more effectively and learn some tips and suggestions for being more effective in everything you do.