Apply project management skills to finish the project according to schedule

This course learning outcome entails the ways on how to properly apply project management skills in order to finish the project on time.

BEING EFFICIENT

In order to accomplish the tasks per individual in a research group, everyone should possess good project management skills. Learning and applying these skills will help engineering students how to incorporate and execute the step-by-step design process in the most efficient way possible.
A well-structured and managed capstone project requires project management. This will lessen the chance of having an overcomplicated design concept and will prevent slower progress on the project.

Possessing project management competencies is a key factor in having a successful capstone project. One of the things that a researcher can do is to properly schedule tasks. Different organizational tools, charts or frameworks can be used by engineering students to display planned tasks and outline methodological process so that checkpoints could be easily identified.
An example of chart that we used to monitor whether if we accomplished a specific tasks on the designated schedule is through gantt chart. This is a chart used to display planned and finished work in relation to time. Also known as a milestone chart, I used it to check if we are doing the tasks on the prescribed week schedule or not? If not, we make some changes and interventions on how to perform the tasks being set in a timely manner, without compromising the time frame set for the submission of outputs such as the manuscript and presentation.

Also, our research group used a methodological framework that outlines the step-by-step design process that needs to be accomplished. For us to perform tasks efficiently, we need a structured guide on how to complete a process or procedure. Using a methodological framework justified the methodology that we used for the capstone project. Since our project is under research & development type, our group adopted this framework instead of using conceptual and theoretical for it best explains the entire methodological process of our study from the start until the expected output. Shown on the left figure is the methodological framework we developed for the capstone project.

evidence of learning

In order for our thesis to be time-bound, we sought help from our advisers and instructors by providing as the needed facilities and equipments for our study. Shown on the right figure is the gantt chart showing the step by step design process with corresponding week frame that it needs to be accomplished. It can be seen that allocated time for debugging of codes, and data collection were too compressed. One of our panelists, Engr. Agar suggested that we should consider extending the proposed schedule to yield satisfactory results after data analysis.

Aside from gantt chart and methodological frameworks, we are using flow chart so that we can easily visualize the processes that needs to be done efficiently. Shown on the right figure are flow charts used for training and validation algorithm, building detection and classification, measurement of roof angle, building dimensions, work flow of building characteristics and the program workflow for Monte-Carlo Simulation (a crucial workflow for generating fragility curves)

REFLECTION

After writing Chapter 3 (Methodology Section), I have grasped some realizations and takeaways from the study guides and the manuscript itself. Firstly, is that I have learned how to create a flowchart which explains the subprocesses that we need to discuss in the manuscript. It was suggested by our ECE research adviser, Engr. Huerto to use flowcharts so that readers can easily understand the design processes and methodological workflow particularly in training the algorithm. With that, I was able to attained an important skill in project management, which is the developing of flowcharts or outlines that I can use as guide to keep track of the progress for the capstone project. Secondly, the gantt chart was first suggested by Engr. Talagtag when we had our first consultation meeting last July 2022. This is to ensure that I can check if the tasks are being met. For me it is already considered an important thing for us to make our capstone project time-bound. I also realized that I have to maximize our time since one of our panelists, Engr. Agar said during title defense that their similar research took lengthy time to finish. Although we know that it would be quite difficult to compress the tasks on our suggested gantt chart, we are very hopeful that we can accomplish the project before we graduate since we are now preparing the needed tools for data collection.

Page updated

Report abuse