Your instructor may bring example projects to class and facilitate the assignment of students to the various project teams. Alternatively, your instructor may ask you to identify potential projects. Therefore, you may or may not be involved in project selection. If your instructor has each student bring in a project idea, you will first need to create your elevator pitch to describe tersely what work is involved in your project and why it is important. Then you and a small team will likely need to select one of the potential projects using a scoring model. Unlike the criteria for selecting among projects in a typical organization, for your class, you may use criteria that will help you learn. You may want to include size and complexity criteria so the project is involved enough for you to benefit by using many of the techniques in this book, but small enough so you
can do the work in a reasonable amount of time. Finally, you may need to identify resources to accomplish the project using a resource matrix.
Regardless of whether your project is student or faculty generated, one of the first things you should do when assigned to a project is to learn about the company or other organization that wants the project to be completed. Why did they select this project? Is it a must-do project or did it get chosen over other competing projects? By understanding what makes the project so important, you will make better decisions and will be more motivated through the term. If your project is a must-do project, explain why. If it is not a must-do project, explain how it was selected. Explain where it fits in priority with other work of the organization.