Putting your development into practice
Whether you’ve managed a project before or not, by focusing on project management processes and paperwork you can develop knowledge, skills and experience in this area.
Your AMA project must meet the needs of your CPD plan and the Competency Framework and should be achievable over three to six months.
You should discuss your AMA project idea with your mentor and then submit your proposal to the MA.
A project proposal form has been developed to help you think about your project. You should talk through each of the sections with your mentor. The headings are:
- Background: a brief description about the need and context for the project
- Title: a name to summarise your project
- Purpose: what are you trying to achieve?
- Objective(s): what are the specific objectives?
- Deliverable(s): what will you deliver or produce as part of the project – will there be a tangible result?
- Out of scope: what you are not going to look at as part of the project?
- Governance: in addition to you as project manager, who do you report to and where are decisions taken?
- Project reporting: how frequently, by what method and who will you report project progress to?
- Resources: what resources do you need – budgetary, people?
- Stakeholders and customers: who are the stakeholders in this project? This may include project team members. Who are the recipients of this project – direct or indirect?
- Stakeholder and customer communication: how are you going to keep these individuals connected and up-to-date with the project?
- Training needs: do you or other people have any training needs that should be met for successful project completion?
- Project duration: how long do you anticipate the project to last from beginning to end?
- Project stages: are there obvious project stages you will progress through?
- Success measures: how will you know when you are successful and how will you measure that success?
- Evaluation: how will evaluate your project?
- Assumptions: what assumptions are in place that guide your approach to your project?
- Constraints: are there already issues or considerations that will constrain the delivery of this project?
- Risks: is there anything that may have a negative impact on the delivery of the project?
- Project closure, lessons learned, learning dissemination and legacy: what do you need to take into consideration to ensure the above?
If you need any help in developing your proposal, please email cpd@museumsassociation.org.
When you have completed the project proposal form and it has been reviewed and approved by your mentor, please send it to cpd@museumsassociation.org for external verification.