A Role-Playing Approach to Develop Project Management and Control Competencies within Undergraduate Engineering Courses: Model, Process and Instructor Guidelines

Project management is a relevant area of competencies and skills for engineering students, although conceptual development may be ineffective if it is not properly integrated with real cases and simulations. In such perspective, this article presents a two-year experience made within undergraduate engineering curricula. Based on the Project Management Body of Knowledge as conceptual model, the training process was driven by a simulated case of project execution upon which the knowledge acquisition and competence development activities were associated. Whereas the instructor has assumed to be the project manager, sub-groups of the class were selected to act in the role of “responsible” of each of the ten project knowledge areas, i.e. scope, time, cost, stakeholder, etc.. The core of the module was thus a simulated execution of processes belonging to the different areas, with a collective discussion of the core issues, inputs, outputs and tools. The instructor has thus worked to define the overall context of the role-role playing session and to integrate the different contributions into a systemic view. The article describes the core model and the learning process developed and discusses the implications at both theoretical and practitioner level, with guidelines to design effective project management training sessions within university and executive education programs.