SHR0606 Theory into Practice

Choosing a topic for your project

This can be tricky. Choose something too small, and it will be trivial. But choose something too big, and it will quickly run out of control. Choose a topic that doesnt interest you, and you will lose motivation. So this is what you do ... Produce a mind map (spider diagram) of the things that interest you Draw a boundary around the things that will form your project This will be your scope Dont make it too big the project will be too large and you wont cope Look at the following graphic as an example.

The thing that interests you is Leadership. You put it in the centre of you blank map. Now brainstorm things that are associated with leadership. Be as creative as you can. Some things will be connected to things that are connected with leadership. For example, in the diagram above, Motivation and Engagement are associated with Teamwork, which is associated with Leadership. You should end up with a big bit of paper with lots of ideas on it. If you have only a few ideas, try harder, much harder, until you fill the paper. 1|Page

Now look carefully at your piece of paper. You cant study all that in your project, but you can study some of it. Now we are discussing the scope of the project. This is very important. The scope determines what you will look at and what you will ignore. You will look at all the things which are in scope and you will ignore everything that is out of scope. Simple, really. So how do we determine the scope? We draw a boundary around the things we want to study. Thats it. Look at the graphic again, and you will see that I have drawn a boundary round certain subjects. They are now in scope. I will study them. The subjects outside the boundary are out of scope. I will ignore them. And that is how you choose a topic. RAS October 2013

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