Project timeline

• Aim to make your timeline realistic with respect to the time that people involved in the project have available. Without the benefit of experience, it is all too easy to underestimate the time needed for the various tasks needed to complete a project, so it is a good idea to be generous with the time allocated to specific tasks.

• Be aware of any dates in your plan that are dependent on fixed schedules (such as gaining ethical approval and teaching timetables) that are beyond your control. You will need to think about how to plan tasks to meet these fixed dates, but also allow sufficient time to be completed.

• Remember that a timeline is a tool to help you complete your project, and you should review your progress against at regular intervals. It can be a challenge to have the self-discipline to do this,especially when things start to slip. If your project is falling behind, then take time to reflect on your progress. Modify your timeline based on the experience you have gained - ideally you want to avoid having to revise it again.

In detail, timelines serve a very valuable function in that they allow you to anticipate parts of your project which are contingent on other stages being completed or dependent on a schedule that is outside of your control. Most obviously, if your project is related to on-going teaching, then you will have to coordinate your project activities with the schedule of the module. In many cases, this will be the starting point for drawing up your timeline. As soon as you know the teaching timetable or schedule, you should be able to determine the dates that are appropriate for activities with students and/or staff such as surveys, observations, interviews or focus groups. You need to be very mindful of other activities (such as examinations) that might interfere with your plan. The dates of these interventions are essentially fixed, and you will have to run your project around them. To develop your timeline you should then work backwards from these fixed dates to determine the dates on which any preparatory work must be completed.

There are various types of time-critical work that are likely to be needed in the run-up to any intervention involving students or staff. The issue that you are most likely to think about is the nature of the intervention itself – so for instance, if you are going to use a survey, you will probably want to draft it and have it reviewed (by colleagues or students outside of your target group) before it is used. This process of refining surveys, and interview or focus-group questions is necessary and needs to be planned for. Less obviously you also need to consider any approval processes that your institution might require before you carry out your intervention. In particular, you will need to find out how ethical approval is managed at your institution and ensure that you plan ahead to meet any deadlines that that process entails.