EUROCON 2005

Serbia & Montenegro, Belgrade, November 22-24, 2005

Project Management Module in

the Undergraduate Electrical Engineering

The Role of a

Pro gram
Matej Zajc, Member, IEEE, Jurij F. Tasic, Member, IEEE

Abstract - The paper presents goals of the project

management module as within the frame of the
undergraduate study of the Electrical Engineering program
of the University of Ljubljana. The objective of having
introduced it within the curriculum was to increase students'
understanding of their role in electrical engineering projects
from the system design point of view.

Keywords - project management, telecommunications,

electrical engineering, curriculum, system development life
cycle, project life cycle.

I. INTRODUCTION

W5, tE do agree that learning project management skills

is not useful just for project managers. It is

generally known that besides a solid technical
background, there are also other skills that define a good
engineer [1]. In technical literature, it is frequently
emphasized that engineers need to understand their role in
an engineering project as well as the project and product
life cycle. Moreover, engineers should have strong
communication skills, understanding of team work, selfassessment, etc. [1, 2, 5].
In this paper we present a Project management module
that is in the curriculum of the electrical engineering
degree with major in telecommunications at the Faculty of
Electrical Engineering of the University of Ljubljana. Our
objective is to assess its role in the engineering
undergraduate curriculum.
We believe that the module on project management
must be closely associated with assignments of students
later in their professional environment. It is for this reason
that we set its focus on the role of electrical engineers in
R&D, production, installation, maintenance and other
fields. Since the students have the major in
telecommunications, the teaching of project management
is discussed from the perspective of telecommunication
projects.
In contrast to different courses on project management,
we do not assume that our students will all become project
managers or have their own business. On the contrary, this
M. Zajc is with Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of
Ljubljana, Slovenia (phone: 386-1-4768880; fax: 386-1-4768855; e-mail:

matej.zajc@fe.uni-lj,si).

J. F. Tasic is with Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of

Ljubljana, Slovenia (phone: 386-1-4768492; fax: 386-1-4768855; e-mail:

jurij.tasicgfe.uni-lj,si).

1-4244-0049-X/05/$20.00 (C2005 IEEE

761

might be true only for few of them who will seek for
opportunities to increase their knowledge in the field of
project management. Our module therefore focuses on
various positions our students might have later in their
professional life in different either private or public
manufacturing or service companies, technical or
commercial structures, governmental positions, regulatory
or control organizations, and research institutions.
Project management modules can usually be found in
post-graduate curriculums of electrical engineering and
computer science degrees. There is a significant difference
between objectives of a post graduate program compared
to those of the undergraduate program. The first major
difference is in the role of future engineers in a company.
The next would be their awareness of the importance of
project management and other non-technical skills.
In the paper we first describe the background of the
Electrical Engineering program of the University of
Ljubljana and present organization of our Project
management module. We then analyze the accomplished
goals and end with ideas for future work.
II. PROGRAM BACKGROUND

Our module on project management is taught in the

third year of the Electrical Engineering program which is
more application oriented (Table 1).
The Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University
of Ljubljana offers two under-graduate degrees:
* Electrical Engineering degree (six semesters of
lectures, six months of practice, three months of
Diploma Thesis work) (Table 1).
* University Electrical Engineering degree (nine
semesters of lectures, six months of Diploma
Thesis work).
The difference between the two programs is that the
Electrical Engineering degree (a four year program) is
more application oriented, while the University Electrical
Engineering degree (a five year program) offers more
extensive and in-depth theoretical knowledge. Graduates
on the four year program, where our module is taught, can
continue with specialization study while graduates on the
five year program can continue with M. Sc. or Ph. D.
study.

TABLE 1: ORGANIZATION OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LJUBLJANA

1 st year
2nd year

Common Curriculum
Automatics
Electronics

3rd year

Automatics

4th year

Practice
Thesis

I__

Electronics

Telecommunications
Telecommunications

Power
Engineering
Power
Engineering

Quality
Engineering
Quality
Engineering

* definition of the project goal,

* project planning,
* executing and monitoring the project plan,
* closing the project,
* project evaluation.
As the emphasis of our module is on system design
methodologies, our focus is on the system development
life cycle (SDLC) steps [3, 4]:
* system planning,
* system analysis,
* system implementation,
* system maintenance.
The SDLC methodologies are illustrated with selected
examples from telecommunications projects.
After each class, students are given two hour
computer assignments associated with topics having
been discussed in our lectures. Technical examples to
be solved are selected in the way allowing the student
to use the acquired knowledge about the particular
topic. With the laboratory classes we acquaint students
with MS Project and Excel.
For example, a project planning class would cover
the following: work breakdown structure (WBS), effort
estimation, task dependencies (network diagram and
Gantt charts), and resources allocation. Another class
would cover project plan optimization and project
tracking and monitoring step.
An important part of the program are team projects.
Students grouped in teams are asked to select, prepare
and defend their project plan which has to be related to
engineering problems from the field of
telecommunications. The teams are instructed to contact
different companies in order to get realistic data. In
general students' projects can be divided into two

III. OBJECTIVES OF THE MODULE

When planning the module our main concern was to:

* increase the students' interest in their
professional life,
* get an insight into technical topics from the
system design point of view, and
* develop certain non-technical skills usually not
being a part of engineering programs.
The students' interest in their professional life is
stimulated by enabling them to get in contact with
various companies. The importance of such contacts at
an early stage is threefold:
* finding an interesting position for their
Practice, which is part of the curriculum (Table
1),
* easier selection of topics interesting for their
final diploma thesis, and
* finding a potential employer and/or grant.
On the other hand, companies themselves are
interested in being in contact. This enables them to
discover the most promising and motivated ones and
bring them after graduation into their teams. There is an
increasing effort observed on the side of companies to
promote themselves among students.
Though engineering modules make students
understand various systems from the algorithm point of
view, they often lack the design and implementation
skills. The target of our module is to arouse the
students' interest and curiosity and give them guidelines
for their individual investigations.
Usually, engineering curriculums neglect nontechnical skills though they are many times as important
as the engineering skills [1-5]. Let us mention only
some of them: understanding team work and leadership,
good oral and written communication skills, etc.
Project management textbooks usually address
complex software engineering projects and managers
positions [2]. For the above mentioned reasons classical
project management textbooks were not directly
adopted for this module.

categories:
* Small business projects involving topics from
the area of e-commerce, infrastructure
installation
(mobile
communications,
telephony, LAN networks, fiber optics, etc.),
*

etc.

Analysis of industrial projects, R&D of new

products (telecommunication equipment,
consumer electronics, embedded systems,
etc.), IT, maintenance (infrastructure,
industrial plants, etc.).
Some of the specific topics focused on in the team
project preparation stage are:
* Team work, team roles, conflict management,
managing meetings, etc.
* Presentation skills, writing skills, etc.

IV. MODULE DESCRIPTION

The various project management topics are covered
in one hour weekly classes. Once a particular topic is
outlined, a discussion is motivated. Generally, simple
examples from life are given so as to make students
respond quickly. The topics discussed in the class
follow the five steps of the project life cycle (PLC) [3,

4]:

762

At the end of the semester, students hand in and

orally defend their project plan. Within their oral
presentation they have to defend their contingency plan
for a particular critical event in their project. This event
is selected together with the lecturer within the project
preparation phase.
To assure efficiency of our module, we organize
several invited lectures during the semester. These
lectures are given by engineers from different
companies, in particular those employing our students.
They are asked to prepare a lecture covering the
following topics:
* Presentation of the project management
approach in their companies with analysis and
achievements of previously accomplished
projects.
* Determination of role of electrical engineers in
their company.
* Demonstration of the importance of topics
covered in the lectures.
The invited lecturers usually select a specific product
for which they present its system development cycle
together with the most important events and lessons
learned. Other topics also discussed by the invited
speakers are for example the importance of
documenting, innovation, communication skills,
speaking foreign languages, life-long learning, etc.
The invited lecturers are advised to deal with topics
already discussed in the lectures. They are also asked to
devote a part of their lecture to the role engineers are
expected to have in their company.

V. CONCLUSION

The module on Project management has been taught

by the authors of this paper for the last six years.
Judging from the students' effort and students'
evaluations we can conclude that the module is popular
and well accepted. Also, graduates report its usefulness
for the professional life.
Our plans for the future is to include widen the
selection of invited lecturers and organize visits to their
companies. Moreover, to improve integration of the
module with the overall program, we also plan to
increase coordination with courses in the same year in
which technical projects can be managed with the
project management skills.
REFERENCES
[1] A. Venetsanopoulos, "Advice to Young Engineers", IEEE
Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 10 -12, July
[2]
[3]
[4]

[5]

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2004.
J.R. Meredith, S. J. Mantel, Project management: a managerial
approach, Wiley 2003.
A. Dennis, B. H. Wixom, Systems analysis and design, Second
edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2003.
J. T. Marchewka, Information technology project management:
providing measurable organizational value, John Wiley & Sons,
2003.
J. Liebowitz, "Teaching the importance of communication in
IT", IT Professional, pp. 38-42, Jan-Feb 2004.