All budding managers and project managers would need to submit an assignment on project management sometime or the other as part of their academic requirements, as part of their Project Management certification courses or business management courses.

Why project management is important

Project Management is a vital part of organisational management; it is  learning about how to ensure that your projects are began and completed on time. The courses would test you on your project management knowledge skills by asking you to write a paper on some aspect of project management.

Writing an academic assignment for submission as part of your coursework requires that certain standards be met.These standards include adhering to the requirements of the course ( the criteria for assessment) as well as standard requirements of good, formal, and effective academic writing. Let us look at some of the general qualities of the assignments you may need to produce.

The assignment should have a proper structure and organisation.It should depict clarity of thought, understanding and focus. Hence, it should have a clear introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction to your assignment should contain the specific theme or topic (in this case, project management and some issue pertaining to it.This helps to focus the attention of the audience.

If you are presenting arguments on a contentious topic, then you need to present your arguments in a way which conveys sense and build up on succeeding arguments.The body of your essay needs to show this sequential arrangement of arguments with the most powerful one being the last. If you are describing a process or some aspect of the project management theme, you still need to describe it very logically and in the appropriate sequence in the text.

When it comes to project management, if you are writing an assignment on general project management, you would need to cover the various generic parts that come under this umbrella term. The extent, to which you cover each part, is related to the word limit you have. Adherence to word limit is very important for academic assessment.In fact, not adhering to it, i.e. exceeding it may incur penalties.

The topic you have to choose with respect to project management may be covering a wide area. This includes areas such as strategic design and implementation, project management process, elements of project management, strategic issues, implementation of project management, interpersonal dynamics and teams etc.

Hence, you need to be very clear about the particular aspect of project management you are discussing in the thesis statement. You may also need to introduce some context in the introduction such as the relevance of project management in today’s times. The more methodical and organised you are in expressions, the better expressed would the essay be.

Ultimately, a well-constructed, thoroughly researched assignment will help you in being an effective project manager. After all, delivering such an assignment is a project, by itself.

Image source: Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net