Gantt charts are essentially task scheduling tools: project management timelines and tasks are converted into horizontal bars (also called Gantt bars) to form a bar chart. A Gantt chart is defined as a graphical representation of activity against time it helps project professionals monitor progress. How to write a simple research methods section.A Gantt chart is a project management tool assisting in the planning and scheduling of projects of all sizes they are particularly useful for visualising projects.Example of a Gantt chartįrankly, I don’t care – as long as it ends up in your application! Or you can just draw it up with word-processing software (which is what I always do), spreadsheet software, or even hand-draw it. Chunk your tasks into major headings, then change the time interval to your months, quarters, half-years, or whatever you have chosen to use. like Microsoft Project) will allow you to group activities into summary items. If you use project management software to manage your project, and you are comfortable with it, then use it to produce a summary of your project, too.

If you are planning over five years, you might break it down to six-month periods. If your project is three years long, then you might list items by quarter. If it is only one year long, you might list items by month. How you divide up your time depends on your project.

Analyse test results and report: 3 months.

Test three key elements: 3 months, with some overlap.

Review data protection regimes: 4 months.

At the same time, if you are combining tasks, you might want to add a bit of time as a contingency measure. Now that you have an ordered list, and you know how long everything will take, you need to reduce the list without losing any specificity. It is about writing an application, but the principle of starting with the fixed end date and working backwards still applies. If you have a fixed end date, you might want to “…build back towards the project start date, then jiggle everything until it fits!” If you want an example of this, have a look at the post “ Work backwards“. In the comments, Amy Lamborg pointed out that you might want to work backwards. It isn’t a necessary step to getting your time-line in order, but it is good project management practice. For example, if you can’t find a decent research assistant, you will do the fieldwork yourself (but that might mean that work will be delayed until you finish teaching). Where possible, you should eliminate as many as possible dependencies. If the research assistant is going to do all the interviews, then the interviews can’t start until the research assistant is hired. Make a note of any dependencies that is, situations where you can’t do one thing until another is started or finished.

How do I check that I am still on track?.

In the comments, Adrian Masters provided some great questions to help with this stage: What is the first thing that you are going to do? What will you do next? What will you do after that? Then I group things together into months for the actual plan. Small tasks like that will generally disappear from the list when we consolidate (see Step 4). Anything that takes less than a week I round off to a week.

Final report: no time, really – just need to find a time to meet.

Testing: about 1 week each, but can start organising as soon as first element is drafted.

Initial meeting: about 3 weeks to find a time.

How long are you going to be in the field? How long will it take to employ a research assistant? Realistically, how many interviews can you do in a day? When will people be available? Estimate the time requiredįor each item on your list, estimate how long it will take you to do that thing. Everything listed in the budget should also be listed on your uber-list? Have you asked for a Thingatron? Note down that you will need to buy it, install it, commission it… What about travel? Write down each trip separately. List of research tasks for the Simple Privacy project, a one year project.Ĭheck it against your budget. Are you performing statistical analysis on your sample? Write it down. Have you said that you will interview 50 people? Write it on your list. Take your methodology and turn it into a step-by-step plan. Make a list of everything that you plan to do in the project. Here are five steps to create a simple guide to your research project.

If they were easy, more people would do them, right? It shows the assessors that you have thought about your research in detail and, if it is done well, it can serve as a great, convincing overview of the project.Ĭlearly, these charts are hard to do. It is the perfect time to plan your project clearly. In every grant application, I want to see a simple visual guide (a Gantt chart) that shows what you are planning to do.

Gantt chart for budget