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Project Management for PhDs there are the unpredictable situations involving illnesses of yourself or your loved ones. Unpredictable situations sometimes also occur in the workplace, such as a prolonged absence of a supervisor or a reorganization of the depart-ment. What can you do?

Many important events can be anticipated or you may suspect that there is a chance that they will arise. An important part of project management is there-fore to undertake a risk assessment. When the risk is high, you have to think of an alternative beforehand.

For example, if there is a morę than 25 per cent probability that you may not find enough volunteers who want to participate in your research or that the harvest of your test crop may fail, you need to be able to resort to an alterna-tive plan if things go wrong. It is unwise to neglect this aspect, because it can cause considerable delay if you wait until the last minutę to make and organize an alternative plan. Moreover, a lot of time will be needed to reach the decision that it really will have to be done differently than originally hoped. No one likes making such unpleasant decisions so there is often procrastination and extra time is lost, causing morę delays in the project. Determining the decision point in advance and then systematically addressing the risk component throughout the PhD program ensures less delay. In Chapter 2 we discuss a model for risk analysis.

We hope we have succeeded in showing you why it makes sense to manage your PhD as a project. The following chapters cover the principles of project plan-ning, from the very short to the very long term. They provide you with the tools to shape your PhD in such a way that you can complete it within the reąuired time. The following chapter first describes the different models that underlie project management.