Dissertation writing is the toughest yet an important phase of a graduate’s life. If you are new to any research degree and someone has told you that a dissertation is the longest, toughest, as well draining task, you must believe his/her words. Yet, there is nothing as serious that asks you to step back. Instead, the way to crack the nutshell is to search for ways to make such lengthy and draining tasks easier or more manageable. Dissertation project management is a trick to systematically cater all writing, research, analysing or interpretation-related tasks to boost your performance. Whatsoever the field of your dissertation, there are some management tips extremely helpful in optimising your research performance. This article will help you overcome all dissertation-related problems by learning dissertation project management.
What Is Dissertation Project Management?
The act of delivering something valuable to someone by using specific tools, skills, techniques, and knowledge is what we call project management. To put it in another way, it is a process of effectively managing a multi-stepped process so something praiseworthy can be served to the client, tutor, or even the concerned manager. However, the project may be of varying nature. Handling a bakery’s renovations, conducting large industrial-level research, constructing a 100-floor plaza, maintaining a bank’s operational system, and writing a worth publishing book all are examples of different types of projects. Thus, the management process can be applied to any of these projects.
In the same way, a dissertation (irrespective of its niche) is a project that needs students to perform different tasks. So, the same project management process can also be applied to dissertation writing, and this act will be called dissertation project management. Hopefully, you have learnt the concept hidden behind the term dissertation project management.
What Are The Five Steps Or Stages Of Project Management?
As discussed earlier, project management is a multi-stepped process, so the following is a brief description of these five simple steps:
Initiation:
As the name implies, initiation is just the very beginning of any research or dissertation project. Some student merges the initiation with the planning phase of dissertation project management, which often disturbs the sequence and cause confusion. Basically, initiation is the formal start of a project that simply refers to the time when you enter the research phase of your life or asked by the committee to start dissertation writing.
Planning:
Dissertation planning is another important step of dissertation project management. It asks students to set a periodic meeting with their supervisor and make a detailed research plan starting from the topic selection and ending by making an informed guess about the expected results of the study.
Also, Read: How Activity-Based Learning Enhances Students’ Knowledge Capacity
Execution:
Have you decided what your main goals to achieve are, and what will be the shortest possible route to reach your destination? If yes, then the third step of dissertation project management is to implement everything you have decided in the planning phase. Though there is no hard and fast rule to stick hard to only what has been decided, you can change any point at your convenience.
Monitoring And Control:
The moment you implement a plan or start writing a dissertation, you must also start monitoring and controlling it. In this way, the execution and monitoring steps overlap. Thus, step four includes measuring the quality, performance, and overall project progression so the worth of the project can be monitored and controlled side by side.
Termination:
The last step in the project management process is to dissolve the project. In some business-related projects, it is not necessary that the project is closed on a marked line; failure may also be the point of closure of the project. However, if the project is the dissertation, then adapting ways helpful to ensure success is foremost important.
What Are Some Ways Of Dissertation Project Management?
A dissertation project can effectively be managed, but you must keep your eyes on minor details. In this way, not all dissertation project management tips are summarised below; it only sums up a few. Shortly, the best way to manage a dissertation project is to follow some tips as shared here after having discussion with top dissertation writers. Let’s have a look:
Start Early:
The initiation phase of project management can easily be powered by using this tip. Simply start your dissertation as early as possible, as it helps you spare some time for the finalising phase.
Plan Your Dissertation On Your Own But Seek Periodic Feedback:
Plan whatever seems perfect to you after extensive research but never stop here. Feel free to seek periodic advice and feedback from experts. Just stay on track to invent something big.
Conduct Research By Following a Fail-Proof Plan:
The dissertation requires you to write at least 5 chapters (though the length of each chapter may vary on educational level). So, only by following a good outline you can ensure uniformity and coherence in the dissertation.
Start Writing and Control Quality Side By Side:
Complete one chapter and send it to your concerned tutor to get suggestions. Cater all comments before starting the next chapter. It will be enough for you to control the quality of your dissertation.
Close Dissertation Writing with Effective Proofreading, Formatting, and Editing:
Before closing, just proofread the dissertation, edit your mistakes, and make it coherent with the selected formatting guide. Once all these steps are followed, send it to get your research degree.
Final Thoughts:
Finally, it can be summarised that a dissertation can be written with and without following a project management process, though there will be a great difference between the qualities of both. The student who follows these ways will end up with a dissertation by enjoying it as compared to one who doesn’t follow them. These tips are shared with you so even a student with less developed writing and research skills would also come out with a supreme dissertation. So, do follow it.