Project Plan
Formative assessment
Submission deadline: Week 21, Friday 23rd February 2024
Background
Planning is a key element of good research practice and needs to be done in a very formal
and comprehensive manner. Planning helps to formulate a project from a collection of
thoughts, anticipate potential problems, and continuously focus the project towards its aim. To
do this requires a clear understanding of:
• what the project is trying to achieve (the AIM);
• what needs to be done to achieve it (the OBJECTIVES);
• how the objectives should be tackled (the METHODOLOGY);
You should consider planning as designing in success, rather than merely keeping failure at
bay. Also remember that in the light of new information that you uncover, you may find your
original ideas and concepts challenged, which may necessitate reconfiguring your work plan.
This is good and should be seen as a positive step, as Dwight Eisenhower (former US
president and Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during WW2) once noted,
“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless,
but planning is indispensable.”.
Task (most important part!!!)
You are to produce a project plan, which should be around 2 pages. Your plan should
consider all the elements described above, along with:
A justification for the project, showing its context. (⬅2 sentences to summarise this
section)
A clear statement of the aim and objectives.
An initial idea about the methods you may use.
A statement of who will find the work useful.
While it is recognised that this may not reflect precisely your final decisions on these topics, it
is essential that you use any feedback you receive from staff or lessons learned during the
seminars to help focus your ideas and develop the skills needed for good research in your
chosen area.
