pects of project management, SimProjet is not in-
tended to be used individually, but as a support to
team work, with ideally 3 to 4 learners per team.
SimProjet is not an exclusively computer-based si-
mulation, but requires “off-the-PC” activities like
producing and delivering documents, as well as giv-
ing oral presentations. Thus, the whole concept of
SimProjet combines team work, computer-based
simulation and role play. More than a computer-
based platform, SimProjet is a complete project
management educational concept.
Whatever the context (academic or professional
education), the SimProjet educational program is
fundamentally the same. The course is divided in 4
stages, corresponding to the 4 phases of any
project’s life cycle: initiation, planning, execution
and closing. Each stage follows the same process:
- Teacher introduces the phase and teams are re-
quested to reach an objective and produce delive-
rables,
- Teams work in order to produce the requested
documents or oral presentations,
- Teacher gives a feedback to the teams.
Phase 1 – Project Initiation: Teacher introduces
the course explaining that participants, by teams,
will have to conduct a project, in a simulated/virtual
organisation. Information about the organization and
the project, as well as interactions with it (communi-
cation with management and colleagues, decisions,
actions, news) are available and made through the
SimProjet web-based platform. Each team plays the
role of a project manager in charge of proposing,
planning and then conducting a project. The project
initiation phase starts with an idea (product innova-
tion, problem-solving, ...) being submitted to the
team. The team must develop the idea and trans-
formed it in a project proposal. To do that, each
team will find on the platform decisions to be taken
(amongst proposed options), and will also be pro-
posed to make optional actions. Decisions and ac-
tions may give the team the needed information to
establish the project proposal (project goals and ob-
jectives, tasks, duration, costs, constraints, risks,
financial outcome). The platform provides team
with indicators of both organization’s management
and project’s stakeholders satisfaction, which evolve
according to the decisions taken and conducted ac-
tions. Teams dispose of limited time, restricting the
possible number of decisions and actions to be tak-
en. Each team must end up the initiation phase with
delivering a written project proposal, and an oral
presentation to the projects’ selection committee,
played by the teacher, who then gives a feedback to
each team about how they performed.
Phase 2 – Project Planning: Assuming the project
proposal has been approved, teams will be requested
to establish a detailed planning of the project. The
platform will provide them the list of project’s tasks,
the potential human resources, as well as decisions
options and potential actions. Teams will have to
produce a written project planning report (contain-
ing WBS, PERT and Gantt diagrams, and a budget
estimation for the project). On the platform, they
will also have to confirm the planning of the
project’s tasks (in a Gantt visual), to book the cho-
sen resources, and to sequentially assign them the
project’s tasks. Teacher will provide feedback
through a formal project planning report review.
Phase 3 – Project Execution and Control: The ex-
ecution phase takes place mainly through the simu-
lation platform. Time's progress will generate de-
terministic or probabilistic events affecting the
project (change request, extra costs, unexpected re-
source absence, ...). Tasks’ execution rhythm de-
pends on the number, availability, motivation and
competence level of the assigned resources. Period
per period, teams are informed of the work’s
progress, and of the evolution of costs, time and
quality indicators. Twice during the execution,
teams are requested to present a project status report
to the steering committee, played by the teacher.
Phase 4 – Project Closing: During this phase,
learners are requested to step back and conceptualize
the learnings from their concrete experience at man-
aging the project. In order to formalize knowledge
and capabilities acquired during the simulation, a
project closing report may be requested.
All along the simulation process, teacher has the
choice of when and how to provide theoretical ele-
ments of knowledge or reflection. The goal being to
achieve effective experiential learning cycle, all
along the four phases of the simulation.
Thus, SimProjet allows to implement Kolb's Ex-
periential learning cycle.
(1) Concrete experience is made by taking deci-
sions, making actions, and establishing the requested
deliverables according to the available information.
(2) Individual and team reflection is based on the
observation of the reaction of the simulation plat-
form to the choices made and actions taken. (3)
From what they observed, teams try to extract con-
ceptual learning, through self-evaluation of their
actions and decisions consequences. Inputs from the
educator will help this step of the learning process.
(4) Teams will then try to experiment the knowledge
newly acquired in the next stages of the simulation.
This educational method, combining “learning-
by-doing”, “learning-by-mistake”, team work, role
CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
474