real space ship if they continue pedaling their bikes like mad.
Measure progress: Once the bikes are airborne to get E.T. to the landing site, there is no way the cops can catch you so you are making excellent progress compared to the goal!
Complete the project: Deliver E.T. to his mothership; say a fond, teary farewell; feel the satisfaction to see this weird episode in your life over with;
congratulate your fellow bikers; reap the benefits of parental forgiveness...
Follow-‐up: Watch the spaceship launch; spend the rest of your life planning what to do if E.T. should try to phone you or just drop in again.
At ESH, we follow this basic project management process, albeit applied to more serious subjects.
The following paragraphs describe the exercises that our M1 and M2 students complete after receiving their project group assignments. We refer to them as
"groups" at this stage as becoming a team will take time. (See Chapter 4. on Communications)
3.2 Specifications: Terms of Reference (TOR) - a general definition
The first step in project management is to lock down the specifications or details in a contract between the principal investor (donneur d'ordres), also known as the contracting authority or client (maître d'ouvrage) and the project
manager (maître d'oeuvre) whose job it is to carry out the instructions of the client and deliver the product as ordered.
Specifications in project management are referred to as Terms of Reference (TOR) (cahier des charges). The terms of reference are basically an accurate description or road map (feuille de route) establishing an understanding between all parties as to the deliverables (finished product), how much it will cost, when it will be finished, and includes guarantees with regard to meeting deadlines and quality standards, upon which payment is contingent.
Terms of reference (TOR) need not be long and complicated but they must be thorough and detailed in the following points, all of which must be drafted before any project work may be undertaken: to provide a framework and measuring stick to keep the project on track; to protect the project manager (team leader) by limiting his/her scope of responsibility; and to establish specific authority on the team (who has language, accounting or other skills) and give legitimacy to the project in the eyes of the client.
Throughout the ESH project management exercise, the "client" for the projects is the lead project management teacher who may, in turn, delegate that
responsibility to another person, such as the head of school. Nevertheless, the lead teacher is solely responsible for assessment and grading.
At ESH we follow the generally accepted TOR format below.
3.2.1. Description of the purpose, aims and deliverables
a. Mission Statement: This identifies the purpose of the project and defines the end goal for the project team. It may be stated simply, beginning with the word "to", implying the words "our purpose is ...". Some examples might be: "To convert our family house into a Bed & Breakfast"; "To conceive, manage and develop an organic fast food chain"; "To prioritize the most efficient ways to cut costs without scarifying quality in training hotel interns"; "To
identify and implement in-‐room waste management techniques"...
b. Vision Statement: This is a statement of end-‐goals or long-‐range plans, whatever you envisage for the project after it has been in place for a year or more. An example might be: "Our aim is to create and manage the best quality B&B within 100 miles of our town and to eventually convert the barn in order to double capacity as a means to supplement retirement pensions."
c. Objectives: The objectives clarify the mission. They should be expressed using the SMART technique: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-‐bound. Using the Bed & Breakfast example in a.) above, we could state our objectives as follows:
We will achieve our mission by:
1) employing at minimum hourly wages all family members living at home to strip, sand, and restore the natural woodwork and redecorating the ground floor reception rooms for public use;
2) converting five of the ten bedrooms to modern-‐convenience standards with rustic décor, including Wi-‐Fi, but no telephones;
3) engaging only live-‐in family members as employees, with the
exception of punctual, on-‐need subcontracting certain tasks to outside services, such as for laundry and catering;
4) finishing all undertakings in time for a pre-‐Christmas opening; and
5) having accounts verified by a certified public accountant on an annual basis in order to distribute profits equally after taxes to the family
members having made a capital investment in the project.
d. Value Statement: This statement aims at establishing whatever specific values should be associated with the project that will enhance the outcome and/or be incorporated into the public image of the outcome. For instance, in the case of the B&B, the Value Statement might be: "We aim to promote
traditional family values expressing gender and racial equality, democratic decision-‐making, openness to and tolerance of tourists from other cultures."
e. Scope: This statement establishes the limits and the formal boundaries of the project by describing what the deliverable will look like when it's finished.
To follow the same example, scope for the B&B could be expressed as follows:
"The finished B&B will have five newly-‐appointed bedrooms available
permanently to paying guests who will also have access to the ground floor living room, dining room and sun porch. Outside guests will not be allowed to enter the kitchen, the basement family room, the family bedrooms on the top floor, nor any of the outlying service rooms. The B&B will be closed during the winter months except for two weeks at Christmas and one week at Easter."
If you are conducting research on a specific aspect of hotel management, then be sure you state what your scope is: "... all 3-‐star hotels in Paris"; "only 4-‐star hotels "; "fast food restaurants within Paris city limits"; "...only chain hotels with American ownership"; "international hotels worldwide", etc.
f. Deliverables: In the case of the B&B, deliverables would be a detailed list and description of each refurbished room. In the event of projects for ESH, your deliverables will be either a business plan or an academic paper with hard and electronic copies and a PowerPoint presentation being submitted to the project management head teacher, in formats immediately usable for jury presentations, online Internet viewing or submission to academic challenges, and attribution of copyright to ESH.
3.2.2. Parameters
a. Time scale: What are the intermediate steps, phases, deadlines and delivery dates?
b. Budget: What costs will you incur to finish your project? Who will pay?
(N.B. ESH will cover the cost of in-‐house printing in black and white. The cost of elaborate foldouts, handouts or special covers must be assumed by the students themselves. Likewise, the school does not provide a budget for transportation for research purposes. Students are expected to have sufficient cell phone forfeits to cover telephone inquiries for research purposes. Should long distance phone calls be necessary, permission to use the school phone may be obtained from the school director on an ad hoc basis.)
c. Territory: Name the exact field of your investigation and the location of the final deliverable. "This project concerns the creation of a single model for a proposed organic fast-‐food restaurant located in the Marais area of Paris, but does not preclude implantation in another quarter should market studies reveal a better location."
d. Authority: Who has the authority to make final decisions? To decide when the text is sufficiently well written? That the subject is completely
researched? Who will hold the copyright? (ESH will provide each team with a Non-‐Exclusivity Statement that each team member must sign, turning over the copyright of each project to ESH so that papers may be published on the school's Web site or submitted to scholarly challenges in modified formats.)
3.2.3. People
Your team will need to identify all of the people involved with the project and attribute exact roles to each. You will also need to estimate the frequency and location of meetings and describe your decision-‐making process (democratic majority rule? authoritarian leader-‐knows-‐best?)
a. Client(s): This is the person, persons or entity responsible for accepting the deliverables at the end of the project and paying for the service rendered. For school purposes, your head teacher, or the person who will evaluate your team performance and your written work, is your "client". Your attitude and interaction with the head teacher or the head of school, whichever is your principle interlocutor for your project, needs to be as professional as if your
"job" depended on it.
b. Stakeholders: These are all and any persons or entities closely related to the project that have an interest or "stake" in seeing it succeed. This group might include suppliers, certain employees, owners, management, and/or investors. At ESH, your "stakeholders" will include the head of school, your lead project management teacher, and any sponsors or tutors you may identify, on faculty or among family and friends.
c. Roles: You will need to identify the roles of every person on the team in order to maximize your success. ESH will identify a Team Leader and Deputy Team Leader for each group assignment. However, these people are not solely responsible for the success of your project. It is expected that each person may bring a specific quality to the team, such as a facility with numbers, previous experience in marketing or communications, fluency in English, etc. Certain people will be more at ease going out on interviews; others will elect to
centralize, control and coordinate the research writing aspects. Who will take the responsibility for maintaining the paper-‐based Control Binder? Who will be the team spokesperson -‐ the one who will regularly give the lead teacher a written or oral progress report? Who will centralize the text? Who will format the text and references? Who will do the PowerPoint? Who will do the financial statements?
The designation of these roles does not preclude anyone from participating in all aspects of project development. Responsibility is shared and should not be solely shouldered by the leader and deputy leader.
d. Structure: What are the reporting lines? How do you see your
Organization Chart for the project? No everyone needs to report directly to the Team Leader. We have had cases where students exhibit symptoms of ADD or
Attention Deficit Disorder. Those students are not left to flounder, nor are they excluded from the group. Rather, other team members are assigned, as needed, as "work buddies" to tutor students with learning disabilities so that they can function equally with everyone else on the team.
No one expressing sincere desire to succeed and willingness to spend the time necessary to learn will be excluded from teams. Special coaching sessions may be required for students unable to participate adequately on teams for any reason.
3.2.4. Planning
Establish the "breakpoints" (interim deadlines) at which you plan to review progress. Breakpoints should be exact dates and may require a team meeting for discussion so you need to make certain that all participants plan to be present on those dates and take full responsibility for finishing their individual assignments as planned, for review by the entire team. List the dates and the purposes for easy reference.
Decide how you can best measure progress. Will you focus on the number of pages provided? The quality of English? The thoroughness of referencing and citation? This is an important time to inform all people in the group that
"research", be it for a business plan or a research project, requires more than just cutting and pasting information from the Internet into Word format. This cut-‐
and-‐paste habit often leads to plagiarism, which is reprehensible, rigorously monitored, and cause for expulsion from the program, and will be discussed thoroughly in the chapter on Research and Referencing Styles.
3.2.5. Agreement & signatures
The Terms of Agreement should be considered as a contract requiring solemn agreement of all parties, thus typed and presented in a professional manner. The team members should sign the document formally and then enter it into the Control Binder where it may be consulted regularly throughout the process by team members and also stakeholders. (Control Binders will be graded.)