Pre-Writing Modules

Use the pre-writing exercise to narrow down a topic for the term's graduate research project - identifying an area of project management to make basic recommendations for improvement.

Brainstorm of ideas -
5 process groups
1) Initiating
   *Project Charter
   *Preliminary project scope
2) Planning
   *Project plan
3) Executing
   *Project Deliverables
4) Monitoring and Controlling
   *Change control
   *Repair Defects
   *Approve final deliverables
5) Closing
   *Final output of projects

Groups I have experience in:
2) Planning
3) Executing
4) Monitoring and Controlling

Classes I have taken to gain experience:
Technical Proj. Mgmt.
Managing project risks
Defining and Managing requirements

Career activities I have experience in:
Gathering Requirements
Technical Design
Testing
Risk Management (all process groups)
Change controls

In gauging career and school experience, I would be best suited to recommend and document risk management best practices.  The topic is rather broad since it crosses all five process groups but it is critical in each group.  Coming fresh off of Managing project risks, I still have the texts and fresh knowledge to use.

This area is great to write about as it is so critical yet often overlooked.  I would like to have 1-2 best practices per process group in my final paper.  The audience would be the executives I am presenting to and it is important to them to gain some traction in their project execution.  If some key best practices were implemented, their likelihood of successful implementation would increase.