Course Time and Project Management: Risk and Coordinating your daily work with the big picture

The course A1002 Time and Project Management: Risk and Coordinating your daily work with the big picture is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, 2027.

Criteria for participation: University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or Master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students).

Requirements for participation: Health Ph.d. student, recommended to be least 1-2 months into the PhD.

Aim: To create a framework for integrating project management tools into work habits for Ph.D. students to help them stay on track or get back on track in the second half of the PhD process.  The content includes time to reflect on bottlenecks and scheduling needs related to completing your Ph.D. project on time.  In addition, you will be introduced to risk analysis tools and Kanban boards.

Learning outcomes: At the end of the course, the participants will be able to reconsider their PhD completion plan, reflecting on how to use a two-level approach to planning and controlling progress and remove bottlenecks and risks in the second half of the PhD.  Participants will also develop familiarity with Kanban boards as a means of documenting research progress and coordinating Kanban structure with research needs that change over time. 

Workload: The full workload of the course is expected to be 15 hours.

Content: The process of “how” to analyze your current PhD completion plan for bottlenecks and risks will be addressed in the context of the students’ own PhD plan and funding constraints. Furthermore, the course will include strategies to ensure that knowledge and communication related tasks such as publishing and tasks related to building a robust researcher identity are considered realistically in the plan.  Additionally, project management related risks such as estimation practices that are too optimistic will be discussed, with key takeaways for avoiding them in the way the second half of the PhD process is planned and envisioned.  As part of the holistic approach to the PhD process in addition to the thesis itself, the course will introduce risk management tools and Kanban boards as a means of ensuring the second half plan for the PhD addresses both the PhD thesis and PhD process.

Assignment Descriptions:

Pre-Assignments:

• 1) Introduction to you and your research including a) brief CV, and a brief summary of feedback on progress and/or midway exam feedback points related to progress
• 2) A Visual Tool demonstrating the Big Picture of your project, such as the IPTO or any other tool you use to communicate the scope and progress of your work.
• 3) Reflection on your motivation for taking the course. Total of 1-2 pages

Post-Assignments:

• 1) Risk remediation plan
• 2) Examples of Kanban boards in use over the 30 days after the course
• 3) Reflection on how the PhD student worked with their Risk remediation plan and Kanban boards over the 30 days, with examples of Kanban boards in use as well as project changes if applicable. Total of 3-5 pages. 

Instructor: Constance E. Kampf

Venue: Aarhus University, Aarhus

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Health Research Year students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at partner universities of the Nordoc collaboration
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 06 April 2027 08:30 - 15:30