Learning Objectives
The management of projects is a difficult and complex task. The experience of recent years has shown that many projects failed.
The costs grow enormous, appointments cannot be kept, the developed product does not meet the expectations of the customer, it is faulty and employees are not used appropriately.
| Often these problems are caused by lack of experience of the project managers. |
Role of the Project Manager
By using a simulator as an add - on to theoretical courses, students should learn the practical aspects of project management. During a simulation run, students will act as a real project manager and learn how to plan and execute projects.
Especially, the ability of making decisions in situations with missing information should be trained, as project managers often have to base their decisions under such circumstances. Additionally, students should be confronted with the typically difficulties that may occur in the planning and controlling of projects.
In particular, trainees should recognize how stress and excessive work pressure can be avoided at the end of the project through careful planning.
Learning Objectives
Students should understand the following issues and also know about of how to deal with them practically:
- The students should learn project management skills and should be able to understand the consequences of the execution or the omission of various activities.
- The students should experience critical project management situations and learn how to avoid or to master them.
- The students should undergo the complex coherences of projects and learn how to make useful decisions for the project, taking into account all relevant factors.
- The students should exclusively concentrate on their role as a project manager in order to understand the full significance of the project manager for a project's success.
- The training should interest students for project management and encourage them to deal with this topic beyond their education.
Evaluation of Simulation Runs
| To achieve the above objectives, every project simulation training needs components of conventional teaching, combined with lectures doing assessment of the simulation results. |
After a simulation run, the project runs performed by the trainees should be evaluated. This provides the students the necessary feedback on their strengths and weaknesses in the implementation of the project and shows them the coherence between their activities and their achieved results.
