Critical minds x Project MARCH
When it comes to advice on project planning, time management and collaboration, Critical Minds is the place to be. A team spirit, clear goal and good planning are indispensable elements to make a Project MARCH year a success. The team has the motivation, Critical Minds helps Project MARCH's Management Team get it right. With employees who have been part of previous MARCH teams, this makes them the perfect partner for Project MARCH. They understand what is involved in a year of Project MARCH and can therefore offer tailored advice.
Project MARCH is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to improve the quality of life of people with spinal cord injury by encouraging technological innovation, challenging students and raising awareness. In this forward-thinking project, initiated and run by TU Delft students, a new team volunteers each year to develop a new exoskeleton. An exoskeleton is a motorised robotic harness that enables people with spinal cord injury to stand up and walk again. The sixth team consists of 26 students who put their studies on hold for a year for this purpose. This year's driver of the exoskeleton is Koen van Zeeland. The team goal of the sixth team was to bring out the exoskeleton. This blog will highlight how the consultancy sessions with Critical Minds have contributed to this challenging goal over the past year.
Throughout the year, Martiene Ubbens (Project Manager) and Eva van Houwelingen (Chief Engineer) had four sessions with Critical Minds. Each session had a different focus. For this, Marise from Critical Minds always looked for a colleague within her team who was an expert in that area. Together, they then gave the session. During each session, expectations and learning goals were first discussed. After everyone was on the same page, Post Its was often added. Each session ended with an evaluation: "Did the expectations come true? "What do we take away from this session?"
The first session was all about annual planning, because how do you divide up a year when you also don't yet know what all is in store for you? Project MARCH is a self-managing team, so anything is possible! Setting up the planning towards achieving the team goal and distributing peaks over a year are things Critical Minds can help with excellently. In this first session, Eva and Martiene were given tools to achieve good annual planning and made a first version of their own annual planning.
The second session was about using Microsoft Project. This is a project management software tool that can help with planning, allocating resources and tracking progress. This software can automatically calculate changes in the schedule, which is very nice in a project as complex as Project MARCH's. Eva and Martiene worked with Critical Minds to figure out how to apply this tool to the project in the best possible way.
During the third session, they talked about self-ownership of a project team. Eva and Martiene received tools from Critical Minds to make the team feel responsible for the course of the project. By having the team itself set the agenda and keep track of action points at meetings with the technical team, more ownership was created.
The fourth and final session took place at Critical Minds' office. Here, Eva and Martiene were given a guided tour. Carmen, the Chief Engineer of MARCH 3, was also present. The session was all about year-end evaluation in terms of project management. What did we learn? What could we have done better last year? It was very nice to look back on our MARCH year together!