A interactive guest talk on Project Management was organised by Oxygen, the Operations Club of TKM Institute of Management on March 23rd at the Seminar Hall of the institute for both the batches of MBA participants.

The chief guest of the day, Mr. Anil Janardhanan, Deputy General Manager, UST Global gave an overview about Project Management, one of the most powerful and evolving disciplines today. Backed with over two decades of experience in managing IT projects, he spoke about the topic from a practitioner’s perspective.

Project Management is the application of skills, knowledge, tools and techniques to meet /exceed the needs and expectations of stakeholders for a project. The purpose of Project Management is Prediction and Prevention and NOT recognition and reaction. He also touched upon systems and project basics and the key entities of a project viz. Project, Engineering and Management. The project management life cycle phases of initiation, planning, execution, monitoring/controlling and closure were dealt with in detail from an engineering, project and management perspective. He gave an insight into the Flexibility Matrix / Triple constraints of cost, schedule and scope and Project Metrics. The importance of Communications, Change, Risk and Quality management was also stressed. The session concluded by summarizing the critical success factors of a project namely visibility (observation), decision making (controllability) and communication.

The presentation was followed by interaction with the participants. During this session, he also enlightened the MBA participants on the expectations of corporate world and the various opportunities existing in software industry for students aspiring for a career in project management.

The function was presided over by the Director, Dr. S Kevin. Also present were Prof. P Nizzar, Dean, Dr. A Viswanathan, Head-Operations Department, Mrs. Gayathri Jnaneswar, Co-ordinator, Oxygen Club, and other faculty members and staff.

The effectiveness of a talk always depends on the content, the manner of delivery and the value it provides to the listeners. Dr Achuthsankar S. Nair’s (Director, Centre for Bioinformatics, University of Kerala) talk at TIM on 30th October was a realistic exemplification of this .Dr Nair kept the first year participants at the edge of their seats for three hours with his informal tone and the novelty of the topic He began the session by asking the audience, comprising of the students and faculty to experience the topic. By triggering the brain to find nearly forty uses of a pencil, Dr Nair challenged the thinking and thought process of the participants and stealthily invoked by saying – “Oh God Please don’t show me a way , Show me many ways .” Problems are a part of our lives and it is our endeavour to find reasonable solution / solutions to it. The human mind is conditioned to find the easiest and the nearest solution and held down by hidden assumptions which more often compels to pick the first option than look for multiple options that lies beyond the problems themselves. During the talk he highlighted that creativity evokes multiple responses when triggered. The uniqueness of the presentation was also evident in the very simple but charming slide designs drawn from ordinary life situations. The talk concluded with the speaker urging the participants to defocus and look at things from afar than looking closely and exhorting them to practice divergent thinking. The programme was conceived as an integrated club activity by TIM Staff Club. Dr. S Kevin, Director TIM felicitated the function.

Prof A.M Salim & Prof A. Viswanathan conducted four residential training programmes ( MDPs) in PROJECT MANAGEMENT on 23rd & 24th June ; 30th June & 1st July ; 13th & 14th July; 28th & 29th July 2010 respectively.

The Programme was jointly organized by BUREAU OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISES (BPE) AND CENTRE FOR MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT (CMD), GOVERNMENT OF KERALA, at Thiruvananthapuram for managers in Public Sector Companies in Kerala. The four training programmes covered 80 managers from various organizations from diverse sectors. Two more programmes are envisaged in the current series.

Each programme is of four days’ duration. The training module for the first two days covered “Generation of project ideas, Screening, Project Formulation, Feasibility Analysis, Project Reports and Appraisal. This module was handled by Prof. A.M Salim and Prof. A.Viswanathan. The second module for the subsequent two days covered project implementation & project soft ware. This module was handled by professionals of CMD. Managers from diverse Public sector Organizations, such as Automotive, Cement, Chemical, Engineering, Textiles, Food- processing, Infrastructure development, Logistics, Housing, Financial services, Plantations, Tourism, Health care, Welfare, etc participated. As per the feed back from the managers who participated, the programme was very comprehensive and gave them rich insights about concepts and application in their organizational settings.