Project Management Templates

My sister is 17 and will be graduating from high school next year (2011). Ultimately she wants to go to Norway to study at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) in an English language bachelor program called "International Environment and Development Studies", but only after taking off a year or two for a working holiday overseas, preferrably somewhere in continental Europe. When I studied abroad, I used to meet European "gap students"aged 18-19, so I figured that my sister is up for a "gappy" program. But we really don’t have much information on what that is, because it’s not a very common thing to do in our country.

My sister’s study will mainly be about understanding how the environment, culture, trade and politics influence development; and learning how to find local and global solutions to injustice and poverty. She has big dreams of making good things happen in our country through human development, education, and business. Apart from that, she is also a performing arts enthusiast who plays great music and acts in amateur theatre productions on and off. She loves volunteering for community development projects in our country like teaching less fortunate kids, reforestation, integrated agroforestry, and mobile health services (where a crew of health professionals and volunteers drive a van of medical facilities to provide free health check ups and basic medicine to poor people in different areas of the province.

The reason why she wants to take time off before university is because she is well aware that the education in our country is mostly just a bunch of formality, a checklist to tick off with no real encouragement to pursue the love of learning and fulfill potential in order to make our country a better place. Really good education is a luxury few have access to, and those who can afford it normally come from very rich families with extravagantly self-indulgent lifestyles, who shower their kids with branded items and discourage their kids from working. As a result, many high school graduates who were "well educated" become very self centered consumerists who know very little about the real world, lacking the discipline and maturity to cast a worthy vision and follow it through. My sister is determined that she will not become just another statistic, but that is very hard to break out of if that’s all you’ve known all your life. And so she decides to break the cycle by traveling abroad at a young age to get a job, support herself, gain basic life skills and develop the discipline to do it consistently, and just understand life a little bit better by experiencing how others in different parts of the world live theirs. She believes that a year off or two to pursue these goals will help her know herself better, appreciate her dreams and future studies, and develop the necessary disciplines to sustain her future pursuits that she otherwise would have never learnt in school, and especially not in our country.

So, after all is said and done, we’d be grateful for the following information:

What can my sister do for gap year, from which she can learn a lot to prepare her for her future studies? Are there any organizations which organize such programs? Would it consist of a long internship with cash allowance, or working odd jobs while volunteering for a development project, involve the management of some kind of entrepreneurship / fund raising, or is it something else? What are some ways that European students spend gap year while traveling to foreign countries outside Europe, and what are some ways that Asian students spend gap year while traveling to Europe? How about visas and work permits for Norway and/or other European countries? What can our family (and ultimately my sister herself) do throughout the following year to plan this carefully and make sure that it follows through?

My sister and I are citizens of Indonesia (Southeast Asia). She speaks fluent English and is a fast learner of other languages too. Spent some of her childhood in the States, Australia, and The Netherlands; but will be graduating from an international curriculum secondary school in Jakarta.

Thank you!

There are many excellent gap year programs. Explore some of the hyperlinks below. What a lucky girl your sister is to have you to help her plan!

It was once an ambitious plan, to build a fence with the most sophisticated technology along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Originally expected to run about 655 miles, the troubled, multibillion-dollar project has now been reduced to a plan for 387 miles, and its designers have lowered its technical standards to the point that system performance will be deemed acceptable if it identifies less than 50 percent of items of interest that cross the border.

The result, said the Government Accountability Office in a withering report Thursday afternoon, is a system that is unlikely to live up to expectations.

DHS doesnt even have a reliable master schedule for delivering even the first block of SBInet, as the Secure Border Initiative is known.

As a result, it is unclear when the first block will be completed, and continued delays are likely, the GAO said.

Meanwhile, DHS doesnt have a realistic grasp of SBINets future costs, investigators found.

All in all, the report amounted to a grim picture of the projects future, noting its decreasing scope, uncertain timing, unclear value proposition, and limited life cycle management discipline and rigor .

It "remains unclear, the GAO said, whether the departments pursuit of SBInet is a cost effective course of action, and if it is, that it will produce expected results on time and within budget.

Indeed, DHS is rethinking the whole thing, SBINets executive director told Congress, according to the National Journals Nextgov.com Web site.

"Is that the right technology in the right places, or are there better mixes and matches? Mark Borkowski was quoted as telling a joint hearing of two House Homeland Security subcommittees on Thursday.

Can we come up with something that’s a little more rational, that’s tailored to each area of the border?" Borkowski wondered out loud. "My expectation is that we would not end up with SBInet along the border. Already, that doesn’t look like a wise thing to do."

The GAOs findings on the long troubled project, launched with a $2.5 billion contract with Boeing Co. in September 2006, likely came as no surprise to the panels members.

Some directed their irritation at DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, as they had at her predecessor.Representatives expressed frustration that the review Napolitano ordered had not been completed six months after its announcement, according to a report in National Defense magazine.

But DHS insisted that the secretary has already taken action to address the GAOs recommendations.

The Department is redeploying $50 million of Recovery Act funding originally allocated for the SBInet Block 1 to other tested, commercially available security technology along the Southwest border, including mobile surveillance, thermal imaging devices, ultra-light detection, backscatter units, mobile radios, cameras and laptops for pursuit vehicles, and remote video surveillance system enhancements, DHS spokesman Matt Chandler told SpyTalk.

But in the meantime, Chandler said, DHS has frozen all SBInet funding beyond SBInet Block 1s initial deployment to the Tucson and Ajo regions until the full assessment is completed.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/06/dhs_backing_off_mexico_border.html

to me it seem like obama is for the illegal immigrants so why build a fence

We are looking for Oracle apps Functional and Techno Functional candidates to work in USA. This is a Urgent requirement.
Experience in Order Management module in Oracle applications is a must. Experience in EDI implementation is a plus.
Minimum 2 fulll life cycles exp. is required.
Working in a reputed companies is a plus.

Desired Profile :
Strong communication skills to effectively deal with various clients and multi-track teams.

Understanding of the project life cycle process to effectively manage a sub-team through the complexities of the business solution.

Must have atleast 4 years of experience in the desired technologies.

Must be a excellent team player and self-motivated.

Should have experience in the atleast two life cycles of project implementation.

Pls send your resumes to recruiterforerp@yahoo.com.

dis is not a place where U can advertise I think………..anyways all d best, hope U get someone

It should include -
1] stages in project life cycle(project conception phase,project definition phase,project planning and organisation phase,implementation phase and project clearing phase)
2]detailed project report
3]project appraisal
4]project selection and clearance
5]implementation of project
6]project monitoring and control
7]project completion

It should be in pdf or doc format

check out microsoft solution framework. i think it was microsoft.com/msf, if not search on google

<<This is life in the code mines, and it should explain why your lucky to get decent documenation much less any form or record keeping.

Wake up and trudge off to the code mines. If it’s early in the release cycle you probably had sleep unless you spent all night playing video games or trying to make one of your own private coding projects work.

Get in and attend a meeting or two or three. Sometimes entire days are wasted in meetings, usually meetings that have zero impact on what you are doing or even worse will produce conflicts in what exactly is desired thus putting your code on halt.

If you actually get to your desk, then there are a host of emails, most minutia about insurance changes, office supplies, a few joke emails, stupid rules changes.

Finally you get to see the important emails. If your early in the cylce they are mostly spec changes and additions. Mid cycle they are massive changes usually, code exchanged with other programmers, requests going back and forth to the DBA(s)/project managers/end client and such. Often you waste an hour or more a day stuck inbetween the project manager, end client rep and upper management wrangling over whether to add a feature or not. In more than on instance I’ve been able to just write a feature in ignoring the time wasting debate about whether it was cost effective or not to add it in far less time than it’d taken to answer the flurry of emails about it.

Late in the dev cycle if it’s not a cricital bug you ignore pretty much all emails, memos and sometimes even critical hygene.

Then when you get to code, if your lucky your writing from scratch. Problem is all these project managers with time on thier hands, no technical knowledge whatsoever have 20 different systems and coding standards they want you to adhere too. Experienced programmers ignore them as they know thier Project manager wouldn’t know if you did or didn’t do it their way and almost all are a complete waste of time with no value added to the project at all. Still you have to listen, nod your head like you care and pretend to impliment it. All time eating devices.

If your unlucky your trying to figure out somebody elses code. Documentation is never up to date if it exists at all. Some coders use vars with no rational naming convention, others use 20 char var names that are impossible to type acurately so you have to waste time cutting and pasting and developing means to cope with thier overly verbose and just as meaningless naming conventions. Anything over 12 is probably as confusing as a 3 char var name. Typos are inevitable if you don’t cut and paste and cutting and pasting slows you down tremendously.

So you write your code knowing that at the last minute people are going to admit they lied to you about what they wanted. They will want features added, will want things changed even though you did it exactly how they said they wanted it done. There will be things that nobody thought of until you reach that point. If you use M$ products there will be bugs not in your code you have to work around. There will be other issues to solve. All of which while dodging Pointy haired bosses who’s main function seem to be in slowing your work down and making it harder.

In all cases you are asked to do work that should take four times as long as your expected to do it in. This is aggravated by all the time wasting meetings, emails, memos and boss talk. Then you have to deal with your own bugs, logic errors and conflicts in development and production environments.

So your code changes dramatically toward the end with a huge portion of it written scrambling at the last minute in a sleep deprived haze. Documentation is omitted or not changed to match what has changed. You start focusing primarily on essential elements, skip minor bugs that you can pretend you didn’t know about until testers find them to concentrate on major bugs and feature creep. Then comes the release which always finds a slew of bugs nobody knew about and you start into the bug fix cycle which is usually really heavy for big bugs then slows down but instead of being able to concentrate on cleaning up your code your given new software to write and expected to magically generate time to fix old bugs inbetween time wasting meetings, memos and other office stupidity. Even finding basic supplies becomes an adventure many times as things you desperately need are always in short supply but what you don’t need in large supply.

So what you suggest is just yet another layer of red tape that means less coding time. Less time spent working on the actual software and bug fixes. It will not be well recieved by coders nor will it suceed unless you provide an environment where coders spend more time coding than doing documentation and company tasks.>>
To Jack,
To Two 11||
To Serenity

Thanks.

It just means that the right hand usually doesn’t know what the left is doing. It’s hard to integrate when people don’t completely understand their part of such a massive task much less have time to learn how it fits with the other departments.

I need to read this adn then answer one question at the end please:

This is something in the news:
It is called When a Frogs sounds in music
Call it the frog squad. About 30 volunteers will soon be trampling through the marshy Frenchmans Bay in Pickering Ontario, hoping to hear the thrill of an American toad or the chirp of the spring peepers frog. If they are still there. The amphibian population is quickly disappearing from the world-including our own backyards- and this group will spend the next few months near the shores of Lake Ontario attempting to get a fix on whats hopping out there.
Frog and toad monitoring started in early 1990s, and it didnt take long for result to show French mans Bay watershed was in trouble. We know that a number of frogs species have disappeared from the wetland, and those that are left are few in minutes, says Patricia Lowe of the Frenchmans Bay watershed rehabilitation project. The leopard frogs arent calling like they used to and there isnt a bullfrog south of the Oak Ridges Moraine.
Lowe blames it on urbanization and the fact that about 60 sewer drains-full of pesticides, fertilizers, and salt-empty into areas wetland and creeks. She explains that monitoring frogs is an excellent way to put your fingers on the pulse of wetland. Amphibians depend on clean water and forests throughout their life cycles (they actually breathe through their skin) and are very sensitive to environmental adversities. This sensitivity, along with their ability to make their presence known by singing during the spring breeding season, makes them an excellent indicator of ecosystem health. Simply put, if the environment is toxic, the frogs die out and their songs go with them.
The frog monitors have just finished a crash course in indentifying the various croaks and calls with the help of audio tapes, and will soon be taking to the marsh. It really can be fun says Lowe, who helped train spotters. Sometimes an entire family will come out. Its a learning experience. She says the volunteers, who usually dont see their subjects, will chart the location of the callas well as their frequency.
Lowe says attempts already undertaken to restore the wetland- with hopes of bringing back the frogs and toads include the planting of native trees and bushes as well as the installation of birds, toad, and bat house. An ultimate answer would be the construction of more storm management ponds- artificial ponds that allow the affected water to sit for a period to clean and stabilize before returning it to the wetland, she adds. It may have taken 40 years for the frogs to disappear, so unfortunately, it may take another 40 years for them to return, if ever.

the quesrion I could not asnwer is:
what skills that could be transferred to another situation would be a person gain by working on the project?

Evironmental awareness…1. not just for the toads and frogs, but the other birds, bats, trees typically native to the area that do not exist anymore….
2. what steps, legally need to be taken to ensure that this doesn’t happen in other lakeside communities as the GTA expands?
3. What plant/animal invaders have made the site inhospitable to the native species(ie purlple loosestife, garlic mustard, carp, asian beetles)
4. Water table issues..
5. volunteer debates over who is responsible to clean up and preserve our existing or dissappearing wetland, greenspaces and water tables.
Hope this helps,
W

I need to read this adn then answer one question at the end please:

This is something in the news:
It is called When a Frogs sounds in music
Call it the frog squad. About 30 volunteers will soon be trampling through the marshy Frenchmans Bay in Pickering Ontario, hoping to hear the thrill of an American toad or the chirp of the spring peepers frog. If they are still there. The amphibian population is quickly disappearing from the world-including our own backyards- and this group will spend the next few months near the shores of Lake Ontario attempting to get a fix on whats hopping out there.
Frog and toad monitoring started in early 1990s, and it didnt take long for result to show French mans Bay watershed was in trouble. We know that a number of frogs species have disappeared from the wetland, and those that are left are few in minutes, says Patricia Lowe of the Frenchmans Bay watershed rehabilitation project. The leopard frogs arent calling like they used to and there isnt a bullfrog south of the Oak Ridges Moraine.
Lowe blames it on urbanization and the fact that about 60 sewer drains-full of pesticides, fertilizers, and salt-empty into areas wetland and creeks. She explains that monitoring frogs is an excellent way to put your fingers on the pulse of wetland. Amphibians depend on clean water and forests throughout their life cycles (they actually breathe through their skin) and are very sensitive to environmental adversities. This sensitivity, along with their ability to make their presence known by singing during the spring breeding season, makes them an excellent indicator of ecosystem health. Simply put, if the environment is toxic, the frogs die out and their songs go with them.
The frog monitors have just finished a crash course in indentifying the various croaks and calls with the help of audio tapes, and will soon be taking to the marsh. It really can be fun says Lowe, who helped train spotters. Sometimes an entire family will come out. Its a learning experience. She says the volunteers, who usually dont see their subjects, will chart the location of the callas well as their frequency.
Lowe says attempts already undertaken to restore the wetland- with hopes of bringing back the frogs and toads include the planting of native trees and bushes as well as the installation of birds, toad, and bat house. An ultimate answer would be the construction of more storm management ponds- artificial ponds that allow the affected water to sit for a period to clean and stabilize before returning it to the wetland, she adds. It may have taken 40 years for the frogs to disappear, so unfortunately, it may take another 40 years for them to return, if ever.

the quesrion I could not asnwer is:
what skills that could be transferred to another situation would be a person gain by working on the project?

Omg you tricked us…we all clicked on this question because we thought you were sad and wanted to help
Now thats just rude

I need to read this adn then answer one question at the end please:

This is something in the news:
It is called When a Frogs sounds in music
Call it the frog squad. About 30 volunteers will soon be trampling through the marshy Frenchmans Bay in Pickering Ontario, hoping to hear the thrill of an American toad or the chirp of the spring peepers frog. If they are still there. The amphibian population is quickly disappearing from the world-including our own backyards- and this group will spend the next few months near the shores of Lake Ontario attempting to get a fix on whats hopping out there.
Frog and toad monitoring started in early 1990s, and it didnt take long for result to show French mans Bay watershed was in trouble. We know that a number of frogs species have disappeared from the wetland, and those that are left are few in minutes, says Patricia Lowe of the Frenchmans Bay watershed rehabilitation project. The leopard frogs arent calling like they used to and there isnt a bullfrog south of the Oak Ridges Moraine.
Lowe blames it on urbanization and the fact that about 60 sewer drains-full of pesticides, fertilizers, and salt-empty into areas wetland and creeks. She explains that monitoring frogs is an excellent way to put your fingers on the pulse of wetland. Amphibians depend on clean water and forests throughout their life cycles (they actually breathe through their skin) and are very sensitive to environmental adversities. This sensitivity, along with their ability to make their presence known by singing during the spring breeding season, makes them an excellent indicator of ecosystem health. Simply put, if the environment is toxic, the frogs die out and their songs go with them.
The frog monitors have just finished a crash course in indentifying the various croaks and calls with the help of audio tapes, and will soon be taking to the marsh. It really can be fun says Lowe, who helped train spotters. Sometimes an entire family will come out. Its a learning experience. She says the volunteers, who usually dont see their subjects, will chart the location of the callas well as their frequency.
Lowe says attempts already undertaken to restore the wetland- with hopes of bringing back the frogs and toads include the planting of native trees and bushes as well as the installation of birds, toad, and bat house. An ultimate answer would be the construction of more storm management ponds- artificial ponds that allow the affected water to sit for a period to clean and stabilize before returning it to the wetland, she adds. It may have taken 40 years for the frogs to disappear, so unfortunately, it may take another 40 years for them to return, if ever.

the quesrion I could not asnwer is:
give two reasons why working as a volunteer at the Frenchmans Bay watershed project would become a challenging experience?

Your ability to answer this question depends on your reading comprehension level. That is what this assignment will determine. Can you understand this written material with a little more effort? If you can, answer the questiion. If you can’t, perhaps you should consider an easier class, one that fits your level of ability. There is nothing to gain by being in a class that’s too hard for you.

I need to read this adn then answer one question at the end please:

This is something in the news:
It is called When a Frogs sounds in music
Call it the frog squad. About 30 volunteers will soon be trampling through the marshy Frenchmans Bay in Pickering Ontario, hoping to hear the thrill of an American toad or the chirp of the spring peepers frog. If they are still there. The amphibian population is quickly disappearing from the world-including our own backyards- and this group will spend the next few months near the shores of Lake Ontario attempting to get a fix on whats hopping out there.
Frog and toad monitoring started in early 1990s, and it didnt take long for result to show French mans Bay watershed was in trouble. We know that a number of frogs species have disappeared from the wetland, and those that are left are few in minutes, says Patricia Lowe of the Frenchmans Bay watershed rehabilitation project. The leopard frogs arent calling like they used to and there isnt a bullfrog south of the Oak Ridges Moraine.
Lowe blames it on urbanization and the fact that about 60 sewer drains-full of pesticides, fertilizers, and salt-empty into areas wetland and creeks. She explains that monitoring frogs is an excellent way to put your fingers on the pulse of wetland. Amphibians depend on clean water and forests throughout their life cycles (they actually breathe through their skin) and are very sensitive to environmental adversities. This sensitivity, along with their ability to make their presence known by singing during the spring breeding season, makes them an excellent indicator of ecosystem health. Simply put, if the environment is toxic, the frogs die out and their songs go with them.
The frog monitors have just finished a crash course in indentifying the various croaks and calls with the help of audio tapes, and will soon be taking to the marsh. It really can be fun says Lowe, who helped train spotters. Sometimes an entire family will come out. Its a learning experience. She says the volunteers, who usually dont see their subjects, will chart the location of the callas well as their frequency.
Lowe says attempts already undertaken to restore the wetland- with hopes of bringing back the frogs and toads include the planting of native trees and bushes as well as the installation of birds, toad, and bat house. An ultimate answer would be the construction of more storm management ponds- artificial ponds that allow the affected water to sit for a period to clean and stabilize before returning it to the wetland, she adds. It may have taken 40 years for the frogs to disappear, so unfortunately, it may take another 40 years for them to return, if ever.

the quesrion I could not asnwer is:
give two reasons why working as a volunteer at the Frenchmans Bay watershed project would become a challenging experience?

Two reasons are:

-it is not definite that they are still there, so they are in effect searching for what may be a phantom subject.
-the volunteers are still following a learning curve and there are different species to distinguish between.

I need to read this adn then answer one question at the end please:

This is something in the news:
It is called When a Frogs sounds in music
Call it the frog squad. About 30 volunteers will soon be trampling through the marshy Frenchmans Bay in Pickering Ontario, hoping to hear the thrill of an American toad or the chirp of the spring peepers frog. If they are still there. The amphibian population is quickly disappearing from the world-including our own backyards- and this group will spend the next few months near the shores of Lake Ontario attempting to get a fix on whats hopping out there.
Frog and toad monitoring started in early 1990s, and it didnt take long for result to show French mans Bay watershed was in trouble. We know that a number of frogs species have disappeared from the wetland, and those that are left are few in minutes, says Patricia Lowe of the Frenchmans Bay watershed rehabilitation project. The leopard frogs arent calling like they used to and there isnt a bullfrog south of the Oak Ridges Moraine.
Lowe blames it on urbanization and the fact that about 60 sewer drains-full of pesticides, fertilizers, and salt-empty into areas wetland and creeks. She explains that monitoring frogs is an excellent way to put your fingers on the pulse of wetland. Amphibians depend on clean water and forests throughout their life cycles (they actually breathe through their skin) and are very sensitive to environmental adversities. This sensitivity, along with their ability to make their presence known by singing during the spring breeding season, makes them an excellent indicator of ecosystem health. Simply put, if the environment is toxic, the frogs die out and their songs go with them.
The frog monitors have just finished a crash course in indentifying the various croaks and calls with the help of audio tapes, and will soon be taking to the marsh. It really can be fun says Lowe, who helped train spotters. Sometimes an entire family will come out. Its a learning experience. She says the volunteers, who usually dont see their subjects, will chart the location of the callas well as their frequency.
Lowe says attempts already undertaken to restore the wetland- with hopes of bringing back the frogs and toads include the planting of native trees and bushes as well as the installation of birds, toad, and bat house. An ultimate answer would be the construction of more storm management ponds- artificial ponds that allow the affected water to sit for a period to clean and stabilize before returning it to the wetland, she adds. It may have taken 40 years for the frogs to disappear, so unfortunately, it may take another 40 years for them to return, if ever.

the quesrion I could not asnwer is:
give two reasons why working as a volunteer at the Frenchmans Bay watershed project would become a challenging experience?

they would have to go through many risky stuff
they have to find a way to help the amphibian which will be hard