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Teaching Project Management in Academic ICT Environments

Conference Paper · October 2007

DOI: 10.1109/EURCON.2007.4400500 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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 Teaching Project Management in
Academic ICT Environments
Željka Car, Hrvoje Belani and Krešimir Pripužić
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing,
Zagreb, Croatia, e-mail: {zeljka.car; hrvoje.belani; kresimir.pripuzic}@fer.hr

Abstract—Project management helps accomplish the section IV analyzes student projects. Section V
common purpose of a project with defined requirements emphasizes the use of software tools to manage projects.
and desired quality. Teaching project management for Sections VI and VII represent results of two projects that
graduate and undergraduate students requires combining were directly used to improve the course quality, and
optimal foundation in theory with maximal usability in section VIII concludes the subject of teaching project
practice, as well as project management tools support. management in academic ICT environments.
Finding an optimal balance between theory and practice,
and motivating students to broaden their understanding of II. STUDENTS’ TEAMWORK EXPERIENCE
the PM area is an exciting and challenging task. If
successful, students’ research projects may yield attractive Today, teamwork is an inevitable part of successful
outcomes. This paper presents our experience in a PM project management, particularly for large
course and illustrates the resulting student projects. telecommunication software development projects [6].
Project management is mainly team management, but also
Keywords—project management, teaching, student time management, money management, etc. While
experiments, education methodology. designing the Project Management course structure, with
the aim of acquainting students with the advantages of
teamwork and the associated risks, we organized student
I. INTRODUCTION projects in such a way as to allow students to plan,
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create monitor and work on the activities for a certain time
a unique product, service, or result [1]. Although basic period, producing high quality project outcomes.
awareness of what the project represents exists, real-life To investigate different teamwork aspects among
research studies have show that the overall understanding undergraduate students, we conducted a short research
of project issues often isn’t very thorough. The study [2] experiment at our Department. The goal was to formally
from 2003 shows that project success rates account for analyze students’ experiences while working in a large
34% of all projects. 15% percent of all projects fail, and team (where teamwork problems become more visible).
51% are considered challenged. Although these numbers Research was conducted on a group (N=56) of fifth year
have improved with respect to similar studies from 1994, students participating in a software engineering course.
there is still plenty of room for improvement. The students were divided in two equally-sized teams
In order to improve overall project success rates, it is and both teams were supposed to solve identical tasks in
imperative to have domain experts in teams, but also to the area of known student business processes. One team
have people familiar with project management (PM) had assigned a team leader whose responsibility was to
principles. This was a guideline used to introduce a organize subtasks, as shown in Fig. 1, while the other
Project Management course for upper-undergraduate team was free to apply democratic team organization.
students of both electrical engineering and computing,
with the intension of building their competence in the
areas of project management basics and practice.
The goal was that students acquire knowledge
regarding formal project definition, teamwork and the
common life cycle processes of a project. Students were
meant to obtain a good understanding of the prerequisites
for successful project management, with an emphasis on
project domain [3], business environment [4] and
communications aspects [5]. The final goal was to obtain
a theoretical basis and practical skills, and to participate
efficiently in teamwork. This would prepare them to
successfully carry out different roles in industry projects.
In order to prepare this course with the desired quality Fig. 1. Communication paths inside teams with: a) an assigned team
and maximum benefit, we decided to conduct some leader, b) democratic organization. Solid lines represent usual paths,
while dashed lines represent unusual paths.
preliminary research regarding students’ readiness to
participate in teamwork. This is described in section II.
Section III describes the Project Management course, and
 Both student tasks were related to student business A. Lectures
process, such as teaching improvement or student canteen Lectures cover the project and project management
efficiency, and demanded a written and graphical solution basics. The lectures are divided into two segments. The
proposal within two weeks. The teams were given a first segment covers fundamental theory regarding project
template to help document their solutions, describe the definition, project management discipline, characteristics
teamwork aspects encountered (along with their and examples of successful projects and project failures.
advantages and limitations), and discuss the team Students learn about the project life cycle process and
organization applied. planning techniques, the role of a project manager and the
The research was focused on the teams’ communication profession itself. The lectures also cover negotiation,
and collaboration, subtask coordination, the process of communication and conflict management. Project
decision making, etc. The results were qualitatively management tools, as well as the aim of project
evaluated and are summarized below. According to the documentation, are presented within this core project
results, the experiences of the team with an assigned team management theory.
leader were as follows: The remaining lectures are composed of invited talks
• Inter-team communication was strictly virtual held by recognized project management professionals
(e.g. by e-mail) and only conducted with the from different segments of industry, as advised in [8]. The
team leader, with clearly defined and assigned ratio between fundamental theory lessons and invited talks
subtasks, is 2:1. Invited talks mostly illustrate industry projects,
• Faster decision making and less responsibility mapping theoretic principles to real-life situations. Each
for team members, with no practical insight year, a new set of invited topics is offered. So far there
into other team members’ progress, were topics about: managing the projects of system
integration, project management as a career, human
• Non-democratic relationships inside the team, resource management, establishing a project management
with one-man decision-making leading the office for an international company, and invited talks
process of finding the solution. describing different examples of projects, such as software
The teamwork aspects in the team without an assigned development for mobile telephony and a civil construction
leader can be described as follows: project for building a business tower. Invited speakers are
• direct and heterogeneous communication (e.g. mostly from recognized IT companies (IBM, Ericsson,
by SMS, e-mail, live), with more democracy Siemens, Microsoft), and from civil construction
inside the team, companies. In a final ‘satisfaction survey’ given at the end
• difficult subtask definition and delegating, of the lectures, students express their satisfaction with the
communication sometimes confused, way theory is illustrated through the invited talks.
• Less motivated team members without clear B. Projects
leadership, no exact supervision of roles and An important and practical part of this course is student
responsibilities. projects. At the beginning of the term, an initial list of
From these experiences, we concluded that students do project proposals containing short descriptions and
not find teamwork odious, but due to their lack of explanations of the projects’ purpose is presented to the
experience, would rather have some form of leadership students. They are also encouraged to propose their own
with clear and precisely defined tasks. Consequently, we projects, and those provided from real customers [9].
decided to act as stakeholders and partly manage student Project teams are composed of 4-10 students, and they are
course projects ourselves, but also have project team free to choose any project they are interested in. Unlike
leaders for each student team to bear some the approach in [10] where the team leader is rigidly
responsibilities, manage tasks, etc. The authors of this selected, each project team appoints its own project leader.
paper later dealt with the teamwork issues by The project lasts seven weeks. The result (deliverable) of
implementing a tool for improving virtual team the each project is clearly defined and should be visible at
communication [7]. the end of the 7-week period. The deliverable is either a
piece of software or a written study.
While working on the project, students are also obliged
III. PROJECT MANAGEMENT COURSE DESCRIPTION to fill out the given project documentation: the Project
The Project Management course was introduced to our Charter, Project Plan, Revised Project Plan, and Project
Faculty for all fourth year students (upper-undergraduate) Closure documents. The form of documentation is defined
in the academic year 2004/2005. Due to the broad by adapted templates divided into chapters that need to be
applicability of project-based work and development in all completed with information regarding the particular
fields of electrical engineering (EE) and computing, this project. Students should plan their activities, make work
course was offered as an elective to students enrolled in breakdown structures (WBS), network and Gantt
any graduate study programme at the Faculty. diagrams, determine project milestones, and identify and
During the introductory year, significant efforts were manage project risks. All team members should take part
made to establish a laboratory environment for practical in the planning activities, while the project leader is
student exercises in project management. In 2005/2006, responsible for controlling and coordinating all these
the emphasis was on taking advantage of high-quality activities. The project team should meet regularly, and all
student projects to improve the course itself. student project leaders should have regular meetings with
lecturers, discussing the hot topics concerning their
project. Students are encouraged to work iteratively and to
monitor project progress through the validation of the
determined project milestones which should be clearly
visible.

IV. ANALYSIS OF STUDENT PROJECTS

Within the Project Management course, in the past two
academic years, three main types of student projects were
identified:
• Software development projects,
• Software implementation projects, and
• Research study projects.
Software development projects result in complete
software applications, ready to accomplish a given Fig. 2. Illustration of PM mobile software agent architecture [11]
purpose. Previous projects include: the Result Messenger,
Project Web-registration, Multimedia presentation of the
PM course, PM agent development (as illustrated in Fig. Fig. 5 shows the distribution of project types for these
2), etc. Specifically, the project called “Project two years. There was a noticeable growth in the areas of
Management Agent Development” [11] resulted in an development and implementation, but the number of
implementation of a mobile software agent (based on the research studies fell. This is reasonable behavior since
JADE platform), which was able to manage specific students from all fields are more and more aware of the
project plan changes and inform project members about applicability of ICT technologies to their fields of study,
the changes. The agent was designed to strictly follow and would like to perform projects of their own, to gain
activities described in the detailed workflow of the practical knowledge and experience.
business process it supported.
Next, software implementation projects result in
appropriate IT- or ICT- solutions for a given purpose, V. TOOLS FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT
using known technologies. Examples of these projects Besides the theoretical part of the course, there were
include: Implementing .NET security, Content two practical parts. The first practical part was to apply
management systems (CMS) functional analysis, the theoretical knowledge learned at lectures by
Electronic territory management system (ETMS) participating in and managing a student project, as
implementation for a pharmaceutical company, Web presented in the previous section. The second practical
tutorial for Internet beginner users (as shown in Fig. 3, part was to learn to use a professional project management
written in Croatian), etc. To illustrate, the “Multimedia tool to ease the first practical part of the course. The latter
presentation of Project Management course” project part was in the form of laboratory exercises. In this section
resulted with the creation of a detailed website in two we will explain how the exercises were carried out.
versions (pure html and flash) containing information for We think that it is increasingly important for students to
students regarding the course structure, literature, grading work with professional project management tools.
system, course staff, and even two video clips presenting Everyone would agree that actually working with a tool is
the course in a serious and funny manner. much more helpful than just seeing it or listening about it.
Finally, research study projects result in detailed written In addition, we assumed that it is easier to understand the
studies on a given subject. Examples of previous research theoretical part of a course when it is combined with
study projects include: Lawful interception in practical, hands-on work in a laboratory.
telecommunications, Electric power world market
analysis, Non-governmental association setting-up process
analysis, e-Croatia etc.
Specifically, the project called “e-Croatia:
Implementation of IT Strategy in Croatia” resulted in
seven detailed studies with documented field responses
(survey, interviews) from areas included in the main IT
strategy, such as education or healthcare. The results were
presented via a website with multimedial additions, shown
in Fig. 4, and written in Croatian.
In academic year 2004/2005, 83 students participated in
14 projects, of which 5 were development projects, 2 were
implementation projects and 7 were research studies. In
the following year, the number of projects for 123
students increased to 17, with 7 development projects, 3
implementation projects and 7 research studies.
Fig. 3. e-Beginner project – Web-tutorial for Internet beginner users (in
Croatian)
 First, we had a long debate as to which tool we would
use for the exercises. Two of the strongest candidates
were Microsoft Project and Open Workbench. We will not
compare these tools here since it is not a purpose of this
paper. We have to admit that both tools are very good, but
we decided to use only Microsoft Project. Open
Workbench has only a desktop application version while
Microsoft Project has both a desktop application and
server version.
The main reason why we chose Microsoft Project was
its server version. Having a server version of Microsoft
Project proved to be a very useful, allowing students to
access their work from different computers and
laboratories. In addition, it was easier for us to help them
when needed and to control their work progress. Fig. 6
shows the actual configuration of the tools in the
laboratory setting.
Fig. 4. e-Croatia: Implementation of IT Strategy in Croatia (in Because we have three well equipped laboratories, the
Croatian)
only expense we actually had was a price of a new server.
We installed Microsoft Project Server 2003 on the server,
With laboratory exercises, we wanted to achieve two and Microsoft Project 2003 on the PCs in the laboratories.
very important goals: help our students to finish their Herein, we will say few things about the actual
projects more efficiently and teach them to use a laboratory exercises. As we mentioned before, each team
professional project management tool. Today, it is hard to was composed of 4 to 10 students. A team had to
imagine that even the smallest company functions without accomplish the following tasks in the laboratory:
using at least one of these tools. We think that this • Creating a new project,
knowledge will give our students a starting advantage in
their professional careers compared to their competitors • Defining tasks in a project,
[12]. • Allocating resources to tasks,
Our previous experience has shown us that students • Storing a necessary documentation to a
understand lectures (i.e. theory) much better if they have repository, and
some kind of a practical work, and even more if they have • Communicating about the progress of a
adequate laboratory exercises [13]. Thus, we decided that project.
laboratory exercises would be a compulsory part of the We provided them with user manuals containing
course. detailed instructions for setting up the tool and
Since the course was an elective for students attending accomplishing each task. At the end of the course, each
many different study programs, it seemed impossible to student was able to finish these tasks independently in a
find fixed schedules for the exercises. Thus, we decided laboratory.
that we would not control the time spent by students in the Upon completion of the course, a few students
laboratory. Instead, we only controlled the results of their proposed we make a slight change in the laboratory
work. The exercises were done in computer laboratories at exercises for next year by allowing students to access the
the Faculty, where students could work at any time during server from their homes. We have decided not to allow
working days. this because of the configuration of the fire-walled
network in our student laboratories shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 5. Student projects distribution regarding project type

Fig. 6. Configuration of PM tools in the laboratory settings
 It is important to note, however, that the students TABLE I.
actually could work at home - they simply needed to TOOL COMPARISON REGARDING CURRENT FUNCTIONALITY SETUP
download the project from the server first, work on it at Function WebCT FER CMS Mambo CMS
home as desired, and then upload the new version back Documents 3 3 3
onto the server. The download and the upload could only
be done from the student laboratories and not from their Presentations 3 2 2
home computers. Calendar 3 2 3
Notifications 2 3 3
VI. E-LEARNING STUDY Forum 3 3 3
The goal of this research project was to investigate the E-mail 3 2 2
possibilities of conducting part of a course with an Chat 3 2 2
appropriate e-learning tool. Comparative analysis was Exams 3 2 2
conducted between three software solutions offered for the Questionnaires 3 3 3
course:
Grades 3 2 2
• Mambo open-source CMS – empowering our
Department of Telecommunications website,
• FER CMS – empowering our Faculty of EE • Level 1: exam results overview and excluding
and Computing website, and students from exams,
• WebCT – e-learning solution integrated into • Level 2: all level 1 privileges as well as the
our Faculty website. privilege of grading exams, and
Mambo CMS is an open-source solution, free to use • Level 3: all level 2 privileges along with
under the GNU/GPL license. FER CMS is a proprietary adding and editing exams (e.g. adding and
solution of our Faculty, developed by employed editing questions).
professionals. WebCT is a widely used open- Each exam is defined with a specific name, date and
source/commercial hybrid solution. The comparative time of execution, duration, password, number of
analysis took into consideration only the actual questions, and exam type. Possible exam types are: blitz-
functionality setups that were already being used by the quiz and preliminary exam. The main difference is that
given solutions, and not the possibilities of extending blitz-quizzes are composed of questions with a certain
these functionalities with additional components and plug- percentage from each predefined group of questions (e.g.
ins. The comparison is given in TABLE I. lecture subjects), while preliminary exams have questions
Results of the study show a significant advantage of the grouped by specific student groups (e.g. student group A).
WebCT solution over the other two content management Teachers with privileges to grade exams are offered two
systems, especially in adequate support for multimedia means of grading:
presentations and student grading. This research study was • Grade by student – grading one exam at the
meant to determine which solution to use for course time, with or without the option to compare it
realization in the next academic year. to an already graded exam on the Web
interface, as shown in Fig. 7 (in Croatian), and
VII. E-EXAM TOOL
• Grade by question – grading one question at
This section describes a student software development the time from each exam for all students that
project, the deliverable being a software tool called e- participated in the exam.
Exam, for online testing and grading students. Students are offered features enabling them to see
Functionality of the tool includes a Web interface which exams are currently available for execution in the
enabling students to take exams from different courses in courses they are taking, which exams are finished and
different timelines at different places. Exams are graded, and which exams will be available for execution
generated from the questions database for each student in the near future. Students can take available exams only
separately. Thus, if the database contains a large number when the teacher provides them with the corresponding
of questions, the possibility of question repetition is exam password. Since each exam is time-limited,
minimized. information regarding elapsed time is given to students via
their Web-interfaces throughout the duration of the exam.
A. Functionality and Software Architecture
The Web-tool offers functionality for three types of B. Tool Verification and Trial Work
users: tool administrators, course teachers and students The e-Exam project was successfully completed within
(course attendees). seven weeks, as shown in Fig. 8. After the tool was
The tool administrator has features enabled such as developed and tested by the student team, the next step
adding, editing and deleting courses, teachers and was to use it for a trial period. The trial was scheduled for
students. Files with specially formatted (character- one business week in May 2006. First, we installed and
separated value) teacher and student data can easily be tested the tool for use in our Department laboratory, and
uploaded and managed. Course teachers are offered then simulated online exam-taking for a small student
features according to the three levels of privileges for the group (N=27). The simulation was aimed at checking the
courses they are dedicated to: application’s stability and robustness during online exam-
taking.
Fig. 7. e-Exam tool: Web-interface for teachers with grading privileges
(in Croatian)

Fig. 8. Gantt chart for e-Exam project

The results were satisfactory, and the tool was shown to
be robust for different kinds of unpredicted user actions,
without causing damage to data or application stability. One of the major challenges in course establishment
Therefore, we decided to use the tool to conduct was the mandatory task of assigning nearly equally-
preliminary exams for 130 students in our Project difficult student projects to study groups composed of
Management course. students studying different fields. Namely, some students
We filled the tool’s database with a sufficient number were, for example, electrical power engineering students
of questions, not only from the course lectures and project while others were studying applied computing, giving
management theory, but also from the practical work and them different background knowledge. One of the ways to
project management tool usage. mitigate this is to increase the lectures’ experience and
The trial took place in three laboratories at our ability to evaluate different projects equably.
Department, equipped with 10 to 12 computers each, in Future work regarding course improvement will surely
four 30-minutes cycles during one business day. Each include additional e-learning support, but not meant to
group was assigned an assistant who gave specific completely substitute in-person lectures and real-life
instructions to students, and provided them with their project illustrations. Some current experiences [16] [17]
exam password. During the trial, there was no tool misuse will be considered for adoption and use in the course.
detected. The grading procedure with e-Exam was very A web-examining tool is under consideration, to be
efficient and the results were made public the following extended with nonfunctional requirements involving
afternoon. Every student had the opportunity to login security enhancements, such as password-hashing and
again to the tool’s Web-interface and review his/her implementing secure socket layer (SSL), and additional
graded test. functionality, such as reviewing and grading home
assignments.
VIII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have presented the syllabus ACKNOWLEDGMENT
implementation for a Project Management undergraduate Part of this work uses and evaluates results from the e-
course according to the four building blocks of project Exam software project and the E-learning systems
management [14] – people, process, tools and adoption study project. These projects were carried out by
measurements, The goal was for students to efficiently two ten-student teams and three stakeholders (the
follow the syllabus and successfully accomplish projects authors), within the Project Management course in the
according to defined processes, using appropriate PM upper-undergraduate study program at FER, University of
tools, and allowing us, the lectures, to evaluate and grade Zagreb, in Spring 2006.
their work and results.
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