Project Planning in Graduate School

What is a project?

A project is any kind of work that entails completing a series of tasks or activities in order to achieve a specific goal. Projects typically occur over several days, weeks, or months and often require careful planning to manage the different components and ensure that you meet the deadline. These are some examples of projects you might encounter as a graduate student:

• Designing a research study
• Preparing for a qualifying exam
• Writing a thesis or dissertation
• Teaching a course
• Conducting a job search

Creating a project plan

In order to manage your time effectively when working on projects, it can be helpful to create a project plan. A project plan helps you to understand what the project entails, when you’ll be working on different aspects of the project, and how you’ll hold yourself accountable. Below are specific steps you can take to create your own project plan. 

Identify the project milestones

Project milestones are the broad steps of a project. These steps could include the following:

• Deliverables
• Components
• Phases
• Decision points

For example, if you are writing a research proposal, some of your project milestones might include identifying and reading relevant literature, writing a literature review, and creating a proposal outline.

Break the milestones into tasks

Because milestones are intended to capture broad steps, they often require multiple work sessions because they contain several tasks. Identifying what these tasks are can help you dedicate time for them. For instance, the project milestone of writing a literature review might include the following tasks:

• organizing the literature you’ve read into categories or themes
• pasting relevant notes about each text you plan to include into a document
• creating an outline based on your notes
• drafting each section of the literature review
• editing what you’ve written

Ideally, tasks should be specific, measurable, and possible to complete in 20–90 minutes. Organizing tasks in this way makes it easier to get started and measure progress. For instance, rather than framing a task as “work on my research proposal,” a more specific and measurable task would be, “draft the first section of my literature review.” 

Estimate task length and assign to dates

Once you have a list of project tasks, try to estimate how long each task will take so you can create a plan for when you’ll work on them. The following strategies can help with this process:

• Add buffer time:  Most people tend to underestimate how much time something will take them to complete, so including some buffer time can be useful. Rather than scheduling tasks back-to-back, leaving a period of unscheduled time in between gives you some margin and a chance to take a break!
• Conduct a time audit:  A time audit is a way to collect data on how long certain tasks take you to complete. This information can help you more accurately predict how long similar tasks might take.
• Identify “do” dates:  Identifying specific dates and times to work on your tasks and adding those times to your calendar is a way to carve out dedicated time for the project. Blocking times on your calendar for specific tasks can help you protect that time and treat it like a meeting or class.

Define accountability checkpoints to stay on track

One of the challenges with longer-term projects is that it can be difficult to stick to the task deadlines you’ve assigned yourself. If there isn’t a specific reason that a task needs to be completed on a particular day, it’s easy to prioritize other work instead, which can lead to project tasks accumulating over time and difficulties in meeting the overall deadline. Building in accountability checkpoints can be a way to keep yourself on track and make the internal deadlines you’ve created more meaningful. These are some examples of accountability checkpoints that you might pair with your internal deadlines:

• Bring a project deliverable to a meeting with your advisor/PI.
• Present a portion of the project at a lab/research meeting, workshop, or other group meeting you attend.
• Schedule an appointment with a Hume Center tutor or Academic Coach to discuss a particular aspect of your project.
• Ask a friend or family member to be your accountability partner. Tell them what you intend to complete by a particular date and send them an update on your progress.
• Designate specific tasks that you will complete during CTL study halls, CTL productivity sessions, or the Hume Center's Dissertation Boot Camp.

Here is an example of a project milestone broken down into tasks, times, and work dates, which culminates with an accountability checkpoint:

Project milestone:  Write the analysis section of my paper

Project Planning Tools

As you plan out your project using the steps above, you may want to use a project planning tool to map out milestones and tasks. A tool can be as simple as a paper list, or you can also use digital tools to help you stay organized. Below are some options you can consider as you plan your project:

• Project Planner Google Doc: This Google document aligns with the steps outlined above to help you organize your project into milestones and specific tasks. Clicking on the link will allow you to make your own copy of the document, and you can also customize the template to your liking.
• Quarter-at-a-Glance: The Quarter-at-a-Glance template is a way to visualize your quarter and plan ahead for important deadlines. It can also help you see how your project deadlines fit into your quarter as a whole and relate to other events you have scheduled.
• Gantt Chart Google Spreadsheet: A Gantt chart is a way to visualize the milestones for multiple projects across a long period of time. This can be a useful tool for big-picture planning and for managing projects that you may not be actively working on at all times (for instance, a journal article that will be under review and require revisions at a later date). Clicking on the link will allow you to make your own copy of the Gantt chart template, and you can see an example Gantt chart on the second spreadsheet tab.
• Apps: There are many different apps available that can be used for project planning. Some popular options include Notion, Trello, Todoist, and Asana. When choosing a tool, consider what you want the tool to do for you. What features are you looking for? Do you want to visualize the project in a particular way? Clarifying your goals can make it easier to choose a tool that aligns with your work preferences and the type of project you’re planning.

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Project Planning in Graduate School

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. You may reproduce it only for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: Center for Teaching and Learning, Stanford University. 

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