Time to degree and graduation are paramount concerns in higher education today and have caught the attention of educators, policy makers, and researchers in recent years. Delays in student flow through learning pathways may result in undesired consequences and this fact has made educators and the public start to regard timely degree completion as…

Many engineering projects fail to meet their planned completion dates in real practice. This is a recurrent topic in the project management literature, with poor planning and controlling practices frequently cited among the most significant causes of delays. Unfortunately, hardly any attention has been paid to the fact that the classical…

The critical path method/program evaluation and review technique method of project scheduling is based on the importance of managing a project's critical path(s). Although a critical path is the longest path through a network, its location in large projects is facilitated by the computation of activity slack. However, logical fallacies in…

The author's goals in this exercise were to use an Excel project to teach students about the effects of changing states of nature on critical path emergence as well as compare the impact of the PERT beta and triangular distributions on project completion times. Previous research into the PERT (program evaluation and review technique) beta…

Master of business administration (MBA) programs are under intense pressure to improve efficiencies, lower tuition, and offer refreshed curriculum that is of high quality and regarded as relevant by the marketplace. In light of this environment, the authors propose a conceptual framework for effectively employing operations management (OM)…

When it comes to project management, the IT department is typically its own worst enemy. When project requests are pushed through the budgeting process by different departments, it's up to IT to make them all work. The staff is required to be "heroic" to get the project load done. People get to work over weekends and postpone their vacations. The…

Capital campaigns are intense efforts to build the financial assets of an institution in a specified amount of time. This study provides an empirical view of how changes in leadership affected concomitant capital campaigns at ten colleges and universities. The transitions during these 10 campaigns influenced morale on campus, altered timing of the…

The changing landscape of digital media and software development has immense impact on society, not only through consumer use of the products, but also in the way these technologies are developed. Modern software and media-development companies are using collaborative methods to develop innovative and useful products. Technology and engineering…

The everyday operations of a school district depend on a network of people, including students, teachers, staff, and administrators. However, the ancillary services staff are really responsible for making the school day run smoothly. They are often the first employees that students see in the morning, either on the school bus or in the cafeteria,…

Both publicly and privately funded research projects managed by universities are growing in size and scope. Complex, large-scale projects (over $50 million) pose new management challenges and risks for universities. This paper explores the relationship between project success and a variety of factors in large-scale university projects. First, we…

Given the current economic constraints facing the country, school districts in the U.S. have been pushed to develop annual budgets through a new lens and to accept the reality that budget adoption is a complex, political process. Whether a school district is rich or poor, growing or declining in enrollment, serving a specialized population or…

Using "inner game" coaching techniques in the remediation of a challenged programme at a Global Investment Bank the environment was transformed into a delivery focused culture. The techniques included group sessions that would be familiar to anyone aware of action learning and were an integral part of the strategy to ensure sustainable…

In 2007-8 the Australian Catholic University (ACU National), undertook a project to develop new resources to provide training and support in eLearning for staff and students. The project was undertaken by a multidisciplinary team drawn from all six campuses and was led by an externally contracted Project Manager/eLearning specialist. This…

Critical Chains project management focuses on holding buffers at the project level vs. task level, and managing buffers as a project resource. A number of studies have shown that Critical Chain project management can significantly improve organizational schedule fidelity (i.e., improve the proportion of projects delivered on time) and reduce…

The process of project management is illustrated through application to one activity, development of a new brochure, within the admissions program of a fictional college. The project life cycle is described, and a work responsibility schedule, project completion schedule, and critical path chart are used as planning and implementation tools. (MSE)