Posted by Damos on March 13, 2006, at 19:57:56
In reply to Re: Getting a good start, rather than last minute?, posted by agent858 on March 12, 2006, at 21:54:57
Ladies, maybe this might help.
Think of the assignment/project literally as a project, like building a house or whatever. [You don't start by building the roof (well at least I hope you wouldn't ;-)) You lay the foundations, put up the frame, etc, etc.]Then:
- Start at the end and work backwards to develop your plan.
- Clearly define and describe what the final deliverable/outcome of the project will be
- Then break that down into the smaller more manageable pieces that need to be produced in order to deliver the final deliverable
- From each of these you can work backwards to the actual work that needs to be done for each of them (basically a Tree Diagram)
- From this you can begin to work out the logical sequence of the tasks, and which can be done concurrently and which must be done consecutively and any dependencies (i.e. I can't do this until I've done that) and you end up with what's known as a Work Breakdown Structure- Once you know this you can begin to estimate and plan how long (duration) each task will take and the effort involved. For example. I can have a task that will take 2 weeks (duration), but the actual effort is only 8-9 hours.
- It's also good to look at any assumptions you're are making about what needs to be done and how you are going to do it and check that they are indeed valid. Also have a think about risks and contingency to give yourself manoeuvring room in case stuff doesn't go exactly according to plan (like anything ever does)- Finally you can start to put dates against tasks and then begin to work towards each small goal progressively in the knowledge that you are continually building toward the final goal. For example 'Produce Written Summary of Chapter 1 of XYZ'
In project management we tend to group activity into phases like Concept (getting a handle on what we are wanting to do); Planning (where we do what I've described above and a bunch of other stuff); Implementation (where we actually do the work), and Finalisation (basically fix anything outstanding, see what you've learned for next time, clean up and move on)
You can probably do all of the above adequately in MS Excel or even MS Word (using Bullets or Numbering to outline the various levels, or if you have it available MS Project or equivalent. And it can also be hand draw in a piece of paper and just stuck on a wall.
That's a pretty rough as guts explanation, hope it helps a little. The procrastination tends to happen because the end thing is too big to get a handle on, so you break it down into little things that aren't so daunting that you can make traction on.
If I can help let me know.
Damos
poster:Damos
thread:619412
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/studs/20051123/msgs/619935.html