Project Management

FsaeIllumina's 5 Common Project Management Mistakes

1. Skipping Reviews

Always have someone other than the designer take 30min to a few hours to spin the cad model themselves in a full vehicle assembly to fully review parts before sending an order out. Do an interference check. Ask how it will be made and assembled. Check for clearances. That holes align. It's a common mistake to try to save time thinking you'll review after sending, or for project managers to focus on hitting "send to supplier" dates instead of "detailed peer review" dates. Keep a checklist of review items, and re-review with the checklist before sending.

2. Inability to Adjust Scope, Manpower, or Both

Project managers need to be flexible. When a project is behind schedule, doing the same thing (now with LESS time than originally budgeted) won't magically bring it back onto schedule. To catch up once behind, the scope of the project should be reduced, or additional resources (ie. people) added to the project. New experienced team members don't always appear. Often you will have to take someone experienced (most first year students are a burden investment; not the best ones to help speed a project up) who is ahead on their own project and get them to help on things that are behind. While the initial reaction of people who are behind is that "its only a 1 person job", remind them enough times, and they will realize some small dividable sub-tasks that they could use help on.

If one subsystem/project misses a big teamwide deadline (such as a CAD-complete deadline), good project managers will adjust scope and manpower to complete CAD for the behind subsystems/projects. While its possible to send out some long-lead time orders before CAD is 100% complete and reviewed, the line must be drawn somewhere on which orders must be held (gated is the project management speak) until CAD is 100% complete. Suggested orders to hold: 2D parts and/or chassis. Work as a team- help each other to finish CAD. The worst case is having some systems building while others are still CADing.

If no more manpower is available, then reducing scope may be the only option to stay on schedule. Give a few weeks warning as a chance to get back on schedule before cutting anything, and still ask the rest of the team for help. Don't end up still doing CAD/CFD/FEA in February.

3. Quietly Miss Internal Deadlines

There's the common idea that "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". While your team gets a big push in the days leading up to the deadline, when the day arrives and things aren't complete, what then? The team may be burnt out from the big push. The worst thing project managers can do is to not acknowledge the missed deadline. Missed and unacknowledged deadlines can make all future internal deadlines meaningless. Instead, acknowledge the delay (best a few days beforehand), and push back the deadline to a new date.

4. Team Exec Take On Too Much Design Work

Items 1-3 take a lot of time to address and keep an eye on. Experienced team exec are work multipliers when they are available to support the team. Exec should be available to put the team first, and help other struggling subsystems/projects, and be available to review. If midway through the year, the exec have taken on too much, don't be afraid to ask for help.

5. Don't Plan Overly Detailed Right to Left Schedules

Sure, Gantt charts look fancy. Never go into more detail than weeks. There's not point to plan things down to the day. You don't accurately know if a task will take 4 days or 6 days. Especially something the person has never done before, and you're planning it 2 months away. The important thing to learn from Gantt charts is what is gating what. Spoiler- it will likely be your accumulator/engine or chassis. Too many inexperienced project managers start with the competition deadlines, then squeeze everything else to fit (planning right-to-left). My advice- don't sweat the small details. Keep planning high-level. Keep an eye on things to make sure you hit big deadlines.