In a recent presentation by Wayne Barker, a Lead Consultant at Thoughtworks Australia, I had a taste of Agile Project Management.

To make it simple, “Agile” is actually a management tool to deal with conflicts of interest during the life cycle of the project. Wayne used a case study to give us a brief introduction to Agile Project Management.

The case was about an information system development project in a financial institute in Australia. It took 18 weeks to complete the project with a budget of 2 million Australian dollars, where 15 core team members were involved. So you can see it is sort of a small-scale IT project. To make a better planning, they spent totally 2 of the 18 weeks conceptualising the project and finalising the project plan. During the 2 weeks, 12 people were involved in 2 workshops per day (2 hours each). The workshops firstly defined high level concepts of the project, followed by a formal inception where things they needed to kick off the project delivery were determined. That included setting the direction, identifying scopes, proposing solutions and writing up the plan.

Wayne showed us a number of photos of the room where the workshops were held. Papers and sticky notes were everywhere. It is like a typical brain storming scene. One of the sticky notes was written by a line manager who stated one of his requirements for the new system, e.g., “I want to be able to…” All of these sticky notes were arranged and assembled to make a whole picture of all the possible scopes by the end of the series of workshops.

One important task to complete during the Inception Phase is to define success. First of all, they listed all the possible items which were considered as a factor of success, e.g., delivery on time, delivery on budget, scope quality, requirements, team satisfaction, stakeholder satisfaction, etc. Then they let their VIPs to rate each item’s importance. Such exercise is critical for better change management at a later stage of the project.

Wayne then moved on the Estimation Planning. I like the quotation he mentioned: Plans are nothing; planning is everything – Dwight Eisenhower.

In Agile Project Management, the planning involves four steps, namely Identify Stories, Prioritise Stories, Size Stories, and Plan Stories. The term “story” here refers to individual scenarios when the new system is in place. To facilitate these four steps, the technique of using Planning Poker should be introduced.

Source: Wikipedia

Planning Poker is a useful tool for estimating software development projects. The picture on the right shows a deck of planning poker. Individual stories are presented for estimation. After a period of discussion, everyone chooses from their own deck the numbered card that represents their estimate of how much work is involved in the story under discussion. All estimates are kept private until each participant has chosen a card. At that time, all estimates are revealed at once without identifying who an individual card belongs to. This technique helps each participant do their own estimate privately at a meeting without the influence others. The estimation coming out of the planning poker procedure tends to be less optimistic and more accurate.

In the case study, Wayne also introduced a poker chip approach to determine the scopes. After the estimation has been drafted out, their project sponsors and stakeholders were given a certain amount of poker chips and invited to “buy” the scopes they wanted on a large table where all the scopes were presented. According to the photo Wayned showed, it was just like a gambling table with squares of different sizes. In fact, the poker chips represent all the effort and resources available. Each scope has its “price” – the minimal chips needed. This scope buying process is a way to further confirm the importance of the scopes and to determine if some scopes are still necessary when the resources are limited.

When the project was formally initiated and things were starting to work according to the finalised project plan, a burn-up chart (y = story point; x = time) was used to dynamicly show the current status of the project. Agile project management breaks down the whole development process into iterations, which are individual repeated work units, producing finished parts of the final product. In other words, at the end of each iteration, there will be a finished part of the final product. This is quite different from the traditional waterfall linear style of project management where parts of the final products would usually emerge in the last stage of the development phase. Having a finished part of the final product in each iteration enables the burn-up chart to show exactly how much of the product has been done at a particular time, no matter by story points or by percentage. The trend line can also indicate if the project is currently ahead of or behind schedule (i.e., the larger the angle, the faster the project is going).

As the project is going, the need for scope change would emerge. This is inevitable, but how can we handle it properly? Remember the poker chips that the sponsors and stakeholders used? Remember the stories point determined by the planning poker? Wayne continued to introduce a technique to properly accept the request for scope changes. That is, any new stories must be traded by another stories that have not yet been developed or delivered by moving the poker chips.  So what happened in the case study was that they removed some of the scopes so that the new scopes could be accepted.

Overall, the taste of agile project management initially gave me three points:

1. Physical instruments are useful, even in the information age. The sticky notes, the planning pokers, and the poker chips set the tone of “non-negotiable”,  “limited resources”, “moving and trading instead of deleting and adding”, etc.

2. Open your mind to accept that change is inevitable. It is critical that you have an approach to deal with the change, and you need to prepare for that in advance.

3. Project management is dynamic. A fixed plan will never work. However, flexibility is not an excuse for project failure. There are a lot of techniques that could help balancing the changes and the “project success” defined originally.

教育经营实战名家讲坛第二讲

职业教育项目可行性分析实务

    2007年，中国教育部把发展职业教育作为重要的工作来抓，这无疑给职业教育市场注入了强有力的定心剂。在良好的政策环境下，各类职业教育项目得到了良好的发展，并且产生了许许多多的商机。那么，什么样的职业教育项目是具有市场价值的呢？如何进行可行性分析呢？如何付诸实践呢？敬请关注教育经营实战名家讲坛第二讲——职业教育项目可行性分析实务！欢迎同学们把自己做的教育项目策划案例发给邱老师，邱老师将对其进行现场点评，邮箱：zhuhaizhongkai＃126.com（＃改成@）。

主讲嘉宾：邱飞龙  资深职业培训师、职业教育项目策划人。现任中凯文化传播有限公司总经理、国家劳动部客户服务证书项目广东省管理中心主任兼首席培训师、国家理财规划师职业资格培训特邀讲师。历任银行团委书记、办公室主任、信贷部主任；保险公司业务经理、讲师、营销部经理、营销总监、支公司总经理、机构总督导。主要荣誉：跨世纪青年干部、十大杰出青年；主要研究领域：职业教育、金融营销服务、营销管理、生涯规划。

【讲座大纲】1、中国职业教育前景分析
            2、职业教育项目可行性分析模块
            3、职业教育项目可行性分析实战经验谈
            4、案例分析与交流

【讲座时间】2007年6月14日星期四晚7:30－9:30

【主办单位】北京师范大学珠海分校教育学院教育经营系

教育经营实战名家讲坛第三讲

创业•学业•就业 

——兼谈女大学生创业

    随着教育市场的不断膨胀，新创办的教育机构的数量将进一步增加。在教育领域创业所需要具备的条件与其他行业创业有所不同，其物质条件要求往往不高，而对其创业者和师资的自身素质要求往往较高，这包括其知识、技能、生活经历、人生追求等方面，这也往往成为教育产业机构的核心竞争力之一。那么，为了将来的创业，我们现在作为在校学生应该如何做好准备呢？创业的追求对现在的学业与就业又有什么要求呢？敬请关注“首届教育经营实战名家讲坛”第三讲，我们将请来教育培训界创业成功人士以及创业投融资领域的专家联袂献讲，机会不容错失！

主讲嘉宾一：吴斌  广州快乐凤煌文化传播有限公司总经理，魅力女性潜能培训首席讲师，广州市形象大使，中国教育部关心下一代教育委员会“感恩教育”课题形象代言人，联合国爱心环保大使。精通两门外语，曾获广州市首届白领之星大赛冠军，曾为马哈蒂尔做过翻译，在多个国际会议上做过演讲；曾在广州市军区部队与地税系统任职；后来对环保、健康、营养、东方女性、传统文化等领域产生莫大兴趣并进行深入研究，于是放下公职，走上艰辛的创业之路，致力于用国学和佛教思想对女性进行素质潜能培训，通过以快乐为内核的修练法，提升女性素质。

主讲嘉宾二：王羿宗  聚网华南区总经理，第三方资本运作专家，善长整合社会资源与缔造创新概念。曾从事过IT、人力资源、互联网、电子商务和投资业以及传媒领域各主要环节的工作，包括公关策划、活动执行，在各种企业活动及公众事件营销领域拥有丰富的统筹和执行经验。现致力与华南高科技及创业投资领域的探索和深度实践并正在倡导建立首只“华南高校创业投资基金”。

【讲座时间】2007年6月16日星期六晚7:30－9:30

【讲座地点】励泽楼C103

【主办单位】北京师范大学珠海分校教育学院教育经营系

教育经营实战名家讲坛第一讲

如何策划与开发一门培训课程

研究表明，我国教育培训市场目前处于急速扩张的状态，将在五到十年内达到3000亿人民币的规模。在这个过程中，教育培训业将进入细分市场，并且向其他各行各业渗透，不同行业里又有其行业性的培训。如何抓住市场需求，根据行业信息，策划与开发适销对路的培训课程产品，成为职业培训师和教育经营者们所关注的焦点，同时也是教育经营专业学生以及希望将来从事培训行业的其他专业的学生所需要学习和掌握的重要知识！

主讲嘉宾：郑磊 资深企业培训师、MBA、NLP国际执行师，现任贯中企业管理咨询公司总经理兼首席讲师。曾在国内多家管理培训机构与企业任专职培训师，现专注于实战潜能的开发与企业的教练工作，原创课程有《你就是领袖》、《NLP潜能教练》、《实干家》等等。其所创办的贯中企业管理咨询公司是联合优秀民营企业家焦宏先生在珠海和上海同时成立的，该公司服务于珠三角及长三角的成长型企业以及追求卓越的人士。公司前身是成立于1999年的珠江西岸首家市场研究企业——喜闻市场研究公司。企业中期目标是6年内成为中国成长类型企业以及个人的第一训练品牌，并能在十年内批量制造出100名百万富翁！

【讲座大纲】1. 培训师高薪的秘密
2. 企业与个人需要什么样的培训
3. 培训老师的成长之路
4. 一个优秀培训课程的开发过程

【讲座时间】2007年6月12日星期二晚7:30－9:30

【讲座地点】励泽楼D201

【主办单位】北京师范大学珠海分校教育学院教育经营系

 大学英语学习与研究生入学英语考试备考

    为了帮助我校学生提高英语学习热情，掌握英语学习方法，以及了解考研英语最新动态，现特邀广州新东方李永俊和陈国辉两位老师，给同学们作有关的专题讲座。欢迎全校师生参加。

李永俊

    新东方教育集团王牌阅读名师。全国考研英语状元。GRE考试满分。授课内容实用，细致深刻，寓意深远。深受学生的欢迎和赞誉，授课伊始至今在教学上获得惊人成功，成为广州新东方数十万学员眼中最受欢迎的资深阅读名师。

陈国辉

    新东方考研名师巡讲团成员。大学三年级起在新东方讲课，教学风格旁征博引，风趣独特。“诠释学”的狂热喜爱者，每年读书300，且好读各类典籍。学术功底扎实厚重，讲课内容实用广阔，教学风格旁征博引，风趣独特。

【主题】大学英语学习与研究生入学英语考试备考

【主讲】李永俊、陈国辉

【时间】2006年3月23日星期四晚上7:00~9:00

【地点】励耘楼A111

【主办单位】北京师范大学珠海分校教育学院、广州新东方学校

【承办单位】北京师范大学珠海分校青年教育促进会

符号系统与认知发展

——心理学权威在北师大珠海分校作研究报告

何文超   赖志超   詹敏华

11月11日，国际心理科学联盟(IUPSYS)副主席、北师大资深教授、博士生导师张厚粲先生和美国依利诺大学K. Miller（凯米勒）教授，在北京师范大学珠海分校共同作了关于中美儿童心理研究的最新成果的专题报告，这是北师大与美国依利诺大学合作研究的“符号系统与认知发展”课题的阶段性报告。

他们通过具体实验，比较了中美两国儿童的认知规律，探求文化差异对儿童认知的影响，最终希望寻找到一种最适合儿童学习与发展的方案。

他们指出，在算术学习方面，中国儿童明显优于美国儿童，这是由汉语和英语两个不同的语言系统本身的特点所决定的。不过，在数数方面，两国儿童则有着共同的规律：都习惯用手指指着事物一个挨一个地数；都按顺序数，即使忘了中间某些数目的叫法，也不会把数目的顺序打乱；都把数到最后一个事物时所念的数目当作之前所数的所有事物的总数。

在语言发音方面，无论中国儿童还是美国儿童，他们在还没有开始学习语言的时候，其聆听—注意素质是基本相同的。各种语言的声音对他们来说并没有多大意义，但是如果某种语言发音经常出现，他们就会学会适应该种发音，并且会产生亲切感。在以后的成长日子里，再要求其学习外语，特别是含有母语里没有的发音的外语，他们则很难逼真地模仿。这说明儿童的认知基础是相同的，但在不同文化背景下却有不同发展。

在学习字词方面，中国儿童学习汉语的总体效率没有美国儿童学习英语的高。其原因在于汉语的量词和同音字太多，声调又有明确的规定，而且汉语文字的结构还有规则的与不规则的之分。但英文的拼写已体现了其发音，这就大大提高了美国儿童自觉或者不自觉地学习生词的效率了。

在阅读方面，通过对眼球运动轨迹的观察，他们发现中美儿童都有一个习惯：阅读时不断地在句子上较大范围地来回看着，已经阅读过的文字也要返回再看一遍。但是中国儿童来回看的范围没有美国儿童的大。其原因是，中美儿童都对多音字词的熟练程度还不高，需要确认其是否已经发对了音；就美国儿童来说，他们需要整体把握某些意思，因为英文里面许多修饰成分放在了主体的后面；就中国儿童来说，他们需要进行字形的分析，还要进行断句。总的来说，美国儿童阅读时把时间主要花在较大范围的来回看上，中国儿童则花在注视同一个字词上。在阅读速度方面，不同年龄段的学生有不同的表现：小学三年级，美国儿童阅读速度比中国儿童快，因为中国儿童对字词的注视时间太长；但随着年龄的增长，情况会倒过来，到大学时候，中国学生的阅读速度明显比美国学生的快，因为中国学生对频繁出现的字词的形态认知已经比较深刻，故其注视单个字词的时间会相应缩短。

最后，张厚粲先生阐述了此次研究的意义。她表示，心理学是关于人的研究，只要有人，心理学就起着重要作用。心理学的研究实际也是教育学的研究，其应用的普遍性尤其体现在教与学上。人在社会文化背景下生活，文化背景影响着人的发展，科学在发展中研究认知的发展，虽然人的心理活动不限于认知，还包括意识、发明、创造等方面，但人的认知的发展是最重要的。