“Project management is the use of specific knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to deliver something of value to people.” For NER, it's our way of documenting our projects, their status, and their changes.
Projects are defined with a Project Summary, Goals, Features and Work Packages. The Project Summary is a Statement of Work; a high-level description of the project and what it sets out to do. The goals of a project are specific, quantifiable milestones that the project plans to achieve. The success of a project hinges on how much it accomplishes these goals. Features are aspects of the project that are planned to be implemented. The features don’t all need to be completed to show that a project is successful; it’s more of a way to describe how the goals will be accomplished.
Our projects are broken down into Work Packages and then into Expected Activities and Deliverables. Work Packages are chunks of work, the most common being Research, Design, Prep for Fab, Manufacturing, and Integration. Depending on the amount of work, these phases can get broken down into more specific Work Packages.
Expected Activities are action items that need to be completed in order for a Work Package to be considered complete. Each Expected Activity has a Deliverable associated with it that acts as a physical indicator of completion. For example, an Expected Activity would be research potential calipers for Brakes 22A, and it’s deliverable would be a Google Doc recording the findings of the research.
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