Planning my thesis - literally (need assistance)

Hi Danya

For me your question is just too general.

- Thesis for a Master or a PhD?
- Target/scope of your work
- Structure of your steps of work to achieve this target
- Which focusses - i.e. special branch, special kind of projects
- Big independent projects or as part of a portfolio
- Time frame or other constraints
e.t.c.

Sorry for this no answer. Put some more specific questions, please.

Regards
Dieter

Hi Dieter,

I guess it probably is general because, well my thoughts are pretty general about it. Let me answer your questions:

- I am doing my Masters
- target is sto gain understanding of the current state of project planning (effective v ineffective?) and the reasons for this
- I am planning to do two case studies where a project was successfully planned and one where it was not and the outcomes thereof
- I havent decided on the type of projects, but maybe that is a possibility ?
- I will choose independent projects
- I assume the time frame is for my research. Well I will have until the end of the year to do this so I guess projects which will come to an end within that will be my focus.

All I wanted was a bit of understanding (in a very broad sense) what obstacles are out there and what opportunites exist.

Hi Danya
A Master thesis, so I suppose that you well know and studied the relevant literature. As for my experience there are some specific reasons or indicators for failure.

- Stakeholders: "enemies" and "friends"
- Project for a customer with penalties (in general not allowed to fail) or internal
- Who is responsible: a company or public organizations or politicians
- Very seldom I realized technical reasons for failure
- Project Manager:
+ "Born" leader
+ Able to focus a team onto a target
+ Able to schedule her-/himself and a team
+ e.t.c. in other postings you’ll find some more items
- Support from management
- Required specialists available...

Danya this was just from my point of view. I’m sure, others find many more. Many companies try to reduce the risks by special procedures, e.g. phases with final documents, risk assessment, quality management.

A scheduling tool such as Primavera will help you to realize time, resource and money related mines earlier.

Regards and good luck for the master

Dieter

Hi Dieter,

Did you encouter a shortage of planning skills in your country?

South Africa has really been affected by the country’s peaks and troughs in the economy and in the past few decades this has seen a lot of planning skills either leave or become redundant here.

The consequence is an industry which is booming on an astronomical scale and the skills and know how are just not there. I would like to research this phenomenon locally but was wondering if there was any similar senarios overseas.

Thanks for your input. It is much obliged.

Danya

Hi Danya,

Currently there is a big need for people with planning skills - as far as I know for whole Europe. If you somebody, for my team I urgently need a qualified planning engineer. I’m sure the situation is the same for most of the members of PP.

Regards

Dieter

Hi Dieter,

Thanks for that - good to know.

In fact, we are also short staffed. At the moment I am running 2 projects and am training up 2 of our site agents in P3 to run their own jobs. Its crazy!!!!

You would think the remuneration = work load

(sigh)

Good Luck with the recruitment though!!!!

Hi Danya,

I had to join a meeting, so I didn’t mention my ideas on the reasons for this shortage.
Here I can just write for German conditions. In many companies and universities the evaluation of planning and scheduling is very low - fortunately it’s high, where I work. So, if you study for engineer, your target in general is to develop products or at least parts. With some exceptions, at universities there is no idea of planning or scheduling.
But now projects are becoming harder with higher penalties and competition. So now companies, who months ago didn’t attach much importance to planning, urgently try to recruite planners.
There is a real bottleneck.

Don’t forget, my personal opinion.

Regards

Dieter