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Key steps for planning your project

Defining objectives, scope, WBS, schedule and responsibilities is a good start

· team,to-sort

When you start your project your team will need to agree:

  • project objectives,
  • the scope of the project,
  • a work breakdown structure,
  • a schedule for tasks, and
  • responsibilities for tasks.

It may be that you are given this information but we recommend that your team still meet and review it in order to establish team ownership of the project.

The following two points are important parts of ensuring project success.

Document control

Decide where documents will be stored (e.g Blackboard, Google docs, 4-share, DropBox etc.) and how they should be named.

Decide what format your files should use. Perhaps put together a template for all documents so that you have consistency across any reports produced, and if people are writing different sections, it is easy to amalgamate.

Idea generation
Whiteboard with colored post-it notes

Creativity can be cultivated through a number of activities. (Don't listen to people who say that they cannot be creative. They probably just need the right process to get them started.)

There are many creativity techniques and the list on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity_techniques) is a good place to start. Have a read through and see which ones might suit your team and the type of project you are working on.