Final year project: students and instructors perceptions as a competence-strengthening tool for engineering students

This work indicates the importance of the Final Year Project (FYP) in the strengthening of competences of engineering students. The study also shows which personal competences of students are reinforced most during the FYP process,including the preparation, elaboration, presentation and defence stages. In order to gather information on this subject, a survey was conducted at two different Spanish technical universities—one public and one private—and a comparative analysis was performed of the questionnaires collected. The competence model considered is that used by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), since the official title of the public university has been accredited by this model. The results indicate which personal and professional competences of students are reinforced well by undertaking the FYP. Any significant differences in response by university are explained in the study. For validation purposes, the results were contrasted with the instructor’s perspective using the triangulation methodology. Finally, the conclusions drawn will permit the design of new study plans to cope more effectively with the challenges of the FYP in the new Bologna framework

How to share lessons learned. Case study to a Telecommunication Project: fiber optic deployment FTTH in Bogotá (Colombia)

This presentation share the lessons learned regarding Project Management best practices during the development of a Telecommunication Project: fiber deployment FTTH in Bogotá (Colombia). The target of the program is to roll-out a fiber network to the Home (FTTH) in all the “Gran Bogotá” (Colombia) in order to develop NPLAY services. It includes the engineering design, construction, development and delivery of a fiber network for 10 million of houses. The investment has been of $400 million during five years and a direct team of 2.500 people has been involved. The project has been funded by the public administration and the dialogue between stakeholders has been one of the most important issues considering the big number of them and their importance: the owner of the project (ETB company); different types of manufactures for the different technologies (power equipment’s, transmission components, switching, IPTV platforms, civil works); local authorities (the collaboration was needed to manage all types of licenses); project management team; project team; consultants or labor unions between others. The first phase of the project had the target to cover 10K homes. The development was done during June 2013. This communication describes the methodology used, the main results and the main conclusions of this first phase of the project so far. In order to share the knowledge and to improve for the next phase of the project an interesting methodology was used. Seven workshops were conducted during three days about seven key areas: Engineering, design, deployment, supervision, licenses, logistics and internal relations. Workshops were aimed at promoting dialogue between all participants and taking into account stakeholders particular interests, identifying opportunities for improvement, causes of problems and proposed solutions for each area. Every improvement actions have been classified according to a taxonomy element indicating how the project works. Those actions have been analysed and structured so that each area has identified a small number of "key ideas". Finally 84 “key ideas” were found and have been classified according to their impact and its viability as a component for prioritization and analysis. Those “key ideas” for each area and the methodology used to prioritize them will be presented in the extended communication. Additionally, a risk analysis was done at the beginning of the project and it was controlled during the development. Specific methodology used and the most important risks presented will be analysed and considered as well. From a point of view of the Project Management there were very interesting conclusions to be applied during the second phase of the project (deployment FTTH to a bigger number of houses) during all the project management processes: initiation, planning, execution, control and termination. Finally, another important issue for the Project Management was the indicators used for the scorecard. Those indicators and their evolution during the project will be as well presented. Those indicators should allow to control the benefits of the deployment daily, weekly and monthly. It is also important the definition of the type of dashboard for the different level of information at a Governance vision of the program. As a main conclusion of this real experience, all the information presented will contribute to the project management in two ways. Firstly, understanding the process conducted that helped to acquire and put in common knowledge and lessons learned at the end of the first phase of the project and particularly the necessity of involving stakeholders from the very beginning and during the process. Secondly, emphasizing the importance of transmitting and extending critical knowledge during the project-process in order to utilise it as a challenge for any project organisation

Negotiation Games: Acquiring Skills by Playing

This paper shows the research done at the School of Industrial Engineers (ETSII) of the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), in two consecutive academic courses. In this negotiation game each team is formed by three students playing different roles, with a different degree of complexity. The game is played three different times changing the conditions and doing the Zones of Possible Agreement (ZOPA) smaller so the negotiation is going “harder” and it was more difficult for the team to achieve an agreement. Roles were distributed according to the student’s experience, since it was understood that difficulty of the roles was different, especially when there was set a time limit for negotiation. The combination of playing and training has shown that students without particularly good negotiating skills at the beginning of the experiment attained better final results than those who have natural negotiating skills, but no benefit of training

Análisis de la trayectoria y obtención de lecciones aprendidas en los proyectos de cooperación internacional de la UPM

La inmersión de la universidad en la cooperación internacional es un reto ineludible en nuestros días. Para que su impulso repercuta acertadamente en la sociedad, es imprescindible un análisis del trabajo realizado, comprobando si está alineado con los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS). Este estudio analiza los 152 proyectos financiados por la UPM y desarrollados por sus investigadores en los últimos años

Implantación de una Política de Responsabilidad Social Corporativa Estratégica: Caso de una gran compañía multinacional japonesa del sector de la automoción.

El estudio muestra un modelo conceptual teórico de RSC estratégica desarrollado a partir de las reflexiones e ideas de otros autores. Se realiza un contraste del mismo mediante la elección de un caso real. Concretamente, se elige a una gran corporación japonesa de la automoción para explicar cómo traslada las políticas y procedimientos necesarios para su implantación a lo largo de su compleja red interna de empresas. Los aspectos más característicos y distintivos del caso se exponen finalmente en las conclusiones, indicando las posibles líneas de investigación en estudios posteriore

International cooperation for developmen: Design of a competence-based model for managing programmes and projects

Managing international cooperation for development projects is a complex task that involves technical, political, socio-economic and cultural variables. The technical, contextual and performance competences of those who manage these kinds of projects must take this complexity as their starting point and tackle it with all their accumulated experience to decide what actions need to be carried out. This research includes an analysis of the theory and application of the project management methodologies currently used by development organisations; an analysis that takes a critical look at the success or failure of development interventions, assessing the components of competences and the essential skills for project managers. It also examines how proposals for cooperation project management methodology are drawn up, specifi c training programmes in this area, the coordination between players, and knowledge management, with the purpose of enhancing the impact of development intervention

Improving engineering students' communication competence: designing innovative learning strategies

This research presents an innovative and formal educational initiative that is aimed at enhancing the development of engineering students’ specific competencies when studying Engineering Project Management subject. The framework of the experience combines theoretical concepts, the development of a real-case project carried out by multidisciplinary groups of three different universities, the use of software web 2.0 tools, and group and individual assignments of students that play different roles (project managers and team members). Under this scenario, this paper focuses on monitoring the communication competence in the ever growing Project Management virtual environment. Factors such as corporal language, technical means, stage, and management specific vocabulary among others have been considered in order to assess the students’ performance on this issue. As a main contribution, the paper introduces an ad-hoc rubric that, based on previous investigations, has been adapted and tested to this specific context. Additionally, the research conducted has provided some interesting findings that suggest further actions to improve and better define future rubrics, oriented to communication or even other competencies. As specific Project Management subject concerns, it has been detected that students playing the role of Project Managers strengthen their competencies more than those ones that play the role of Team Members. It has also been detected that students have more difficulty assimilating concepts related to risk and quality management. However those concepts related with areas of knowledge like scope, time or cost have been better assimilated by the students

Strengthening communication skills in an innovative context of engineering project management learning

This document presents an innovative, formal educational initiative that is aimed at enhancing the development of engineering students’ specific competences when studying Project Management (PM) subject. The framework of the experience combines (1) theoretical concepts, (2) the development of a real-case project carried out by multidisciplinary groups of three different universities, (3) the use of software web 2.0 tools and (4) group and individual assignments of students that play different roles (project managers and team members). Under this scenario, the study focuses on monitoring the communication competence in the ever growing PM virtual environment. Factors such as corporal language, technical means, stage, and PM specific vocabulary among others have been considered in order to assess the students’ performance on this issue. As a main contribution, the paper introduces an ad-hoc rubric that, based on previous investigations, has been adapted and tested for the first time to this new and specific context. Additionally, the research conducted has provided some interesting findings that suggest further actions to improve and better define future rubrics, oriented to communication or even other competences. As specific PM subject concerns, it has been detected that students playing the role of Project Managers strengthen their competences more than those ones that play the role of Team Members. It has also been detected that students have more difficulty assimilating concepts related to risk and quality management. However those concepts related with scope, time or cost areas of knowledge have been better assimilated by the students

Conflict resolution to project performance

Conflict resolution is a key issue to manage when dealing with diverse stakeholders. By analyzing in depth the most relevant and implicit aspects of the construct "conflict", this study focuses on examining how the five main strategies in solving common disagreements are adopted by considering different conflict sources. Hypotheses are tested using data collected from both the academic and business world. Perceptions of project managers and team members allows the authors not only to find significant differences by role played or type of organization, but to narrow the design of future approaches to investigate the relation between conflict and project performance. More specifically, the research indicates that project managers adopt confronting and compromising styles in most cases as first options, highlighting the influence of responsibility degree factor in how issues are undertaken within a project team

Forecasting Project's evolution. A step forward from the EVMS.

The goal of this work is to define a framework for project forecasting activities as well as to set up proposals regarding improvement for some of the tools involved in these processes. In particular attention will be payed to Earned Value Management System (EVMS) tool as it is a well known instrument for project monitoring and, in some cases, for project forecasting too. Main inn ovation in this work is the proposal for estimation SPI and CPI indexes on the next future of the project in accordance to their previous values as well as to the impact in the project of non technical factor slike team construction, common vision for the project and other managerial aspects related to it. Anew model is provided in this paper allowing to process surveys based information from the project team in order to adjust the estimation for next values of already mentioned EVMS indexes, in order to produce a more consistent forecasting for the project evolution