BRUNEL UNIVERSITY LECTURE
Project Management & Planning for young Entrepreneurs
Brunel run a 1-2 year course for students wishing to apply for a Graduate Entrepreneur Visa. A key part of the course is providing students with a background to Project Management and Planning.
Students arrive with a viable business idea that they will put into operation. They need to reach a turnover of £50k over the 2 years to allow them to move to an Entrepreneur visa.
For them to succeed, they need to develop a plan for their business – and so they need to understand how to create an initial plan (Gantt), find their critical path and to understand how to monitor and modify their plan as changes occur.
Working with Brunel’s Enterprise and Innovation Consultant, we developed – and then ran – a short introductory course to Project Management, introducing them to the subject and then helping them develop plans for their start-ups.
Our course covered the basics of Project Management:
- PM tools & techniques
- Definitions and examples of key project terms and concepts
- Simple – but effective – approaches to developing and maintaining project plans
We followed this up with some time spent on individual concepts and plans to help them formulate their thinking.
The course was well-received and is set to be repeated. We received excellent feedback – and students went away more confident in their ability to develop and put in place their plans. A proposed follow-up activity is to provide Mentoring for individuals from the course as they move forward with their concepts. This is currently under discussion.