Getting started – project initiation

154 Chapter 7 n Controlling your project completing a form and providing evidence of some kind, such as a doctor’s note. Note, however, that your institution will have guidelines on what is an acceptable reason for claiming extenuating circumstances – such as illness – and what is not – for example, going on a holiday with your friends for two weeks during term time. Also make sure that you follow your institution’s guidelines on this issue. For example, some institu- tions require that these sorts of claims need to be made within a certain time frame. Your supervisor should advise you on the regulations. By following your institution’s procedures you are at least going some way to dealing with your problem. Not only will they be able to help you on an emotional level for example, with counselling services but you may well be awarded exten- sions to complete your work. Above all remember that if you do not let anyone know what has happened then nothing can be done to help.

7.2.4 Hardware failure

In almost all projects these days, computers are used to a greater or lesser extent. They might be used simply to word process your final report or they might be used throughout the entirety of your project as you develop a program or use them to analyse data. Whatever the case you may well find that the computer you use fails and that data and files you are using are lost or erased forever. The only answer to these kinds of problems is to make numerous and frequent back-ups. These can be made onto memory sticks, so you can take them away with you, or onto your institution’s own file server. It is up to you how often and how many back-up copies you make – you know the reliability of the system you are using. However, to make no back-ups at all is ill advised. Certainly, towards the end of your project, daily back-ups will be essential. Losing an entire week’s work at the start of your project is not too serious, but at the end it would be disastrous. Take the following example as a cautionary tale: Example Jane was a final year undergraduate student on a computer studies course and kept her work backed up on memory sticks that she carried around with her. She was reasonably well organised and as such made three back-up copies of her work every day. One day, when she was working on her dissertation, she found that she couldn’t read any data on her hard drive – her PC had crashed. Fortunately, she had her back-up memory sticks with her and loaded one of these into her machine. The PC claimed the memory stick was unreadable and she tried one of the others. Again, the PC claimed that the stick was unreadable. At this point Jane realised something was terribly wrong with the machine she was using. Moving onto another machine and using her third back-up memory stick, she was able to save her work. What had happened was that Jane’s PC had become infected with a virus and was eras- ing any memory sticks that were connected to it. Had Jane only made two back-ups of her work she would have lost everything. Fortunately, with three back-ups, all was not lost and she was able to complete her project on time on another machine. 7.2 Dealing with problems 155

7.2.5 Data availability

Data availability is often a problem with student projects. Either a journal or a book you require is unavailable, you can’t get hold of some data, you lose your contact in a local company where you hoped to perform a case study or you receive a poor response from some questionnaires you issued. Whatever the problem, your project looks as though it will suffer from a lack of available data. In a similar vein to weakening discussed earlier, problems with data availability can often be traced back to your project’s early stages. If you had thought about your project more thoroughly during its inauguration, you might have identified that a bookjournal was difficult to obtain, questionnaires were likely to prove unreliable and so on. Bearing these things in mind you might well set up contingency plans at an early stage – for example, changing your project’s direction so that it doesn’t rely entirely on a particular set of data. If, however, data availability problems only become apparent well into your project they must be dealt with there and then. Simply put, either the data are available or they are not. Begin first, with the help of your supervisor, considering whether you can obtain the information you require from another source – is there another company you could use as a case study, for example? Have you time to chase up the question- naires you sent out or send out new ones? Does your supervisor or your colleagues have alternative data you could use? However, if no other options are forthcoming, the sooner you accept this, adjust your project and proceed the better.

7.2.6 Discovering your workresearch has been done before

On a taught degree you will not be expected to make a contribution to world knowledge, but this is not the case for research degrees, particularly for PhDs see Chapter 5. At research degree level, students often worry if their work is truly unique and is not merely repeating the work of others. They worry if the project they are pursuing has not been undertaken by someone else before and, as a consequence, are not making that contribution that is vital at PhD level they are perhaps in the Demoralised quadrant of Figure 2.2. The first means of avoiding this problem is to ensure that you have conducted a thor- ough literature survey in the first place. Not only should you read all the relevant journals and books associated with your topic area but you should find out about andor attend conferences in your field, too. It is at conferences that cutting-edge work may be presented first and ideas are discussed that are not yet published elsewhere. Try to get hold of conference proceedings early and use the Internet to access conference schedules and programmes. Through these sources you will keep track of who is doing what in particular areas and where the latest thinking is heading. It is also useful to build up contacts with other departments, research groups and institutions that are working in your field. Through the literature, conference announcements and your supervisor, you should be able to identify the ‘key players’ in your field. Try to make contact with them and keep track of what they are currently working on. The Internet and mail discussion groups are usually a good source of information in this area. If you are satisfied that the work you are doing is unique, there is still a worry that someone else may publish your ideasresults first. One way to overcome this is to submit