Ultimate Guide to Event Management 5

Part 1.3: Procedures & Fulfilling Pre-Requisites

Reminder: This part is very crucial as students (project managers) were mainly stuck and delayed in progress at this stage due to lack of understanding in addressing or fulfilling the requisites needed.


These are the steps needed to be taken after your first meeting if you are the project manager;

• Ask the secretary to compile the working paper
• Meet the advisor, explain regarding the project you are doing and inform him/her that you will give them updates regarding the progress
• Meet with the Student Council (SC), explaining to him/her regarding the program and ask them to write a recommendation letter
• When the working paper is ready, get a real hand signature from the advisor, project manager & secretary then compile it with recommendation letter from SC (Insert with support letter if any)

With the above ready, continue with the procedures that you need to go through before getting the approval. Latest procedures in CUCMS is as below;

Ultimate Guide to Event Management 4

By: Dr^Waqipedia

Part 1.2: Project Planning & Working Paper

90/10 Rule:

"First 10% of your time that you spend planning and organizing your work before you begin will save as much as 90% of the time getting job done once you get it started."

Previously, I shared with you all the Triangle of Vitalities which is essential in 'creating your vision'. Having that in mind will lead you to the next stage; project planning.

In the corporate world, to understand the project planning, you need to familiarize yourself with certain terms such as corporate planning, strategic planning, marketing or operational planning.

However, I would like to emphasize on two types of planning which would be of great help when you are working on the event-based type planning. They are;

• Strategic/Long-Term Planning
• Operational/Short-Term Planning 

Strategic planning works like future-oriented planning, it determines the long term objectives of an organization or team as a whole with a time horizon of more than 3 years. The strategic plans will contain the framework to stay competitive, live up to the core values, get rid of any threats and take advantage of opportunities. The distinctive attributes to it are your vision, mission, core values, future goals and the strategies. 

Next, the operational planning or short-term plan. It is a specific, smaller scale project which has been planned according to the strategic planning or after looking throughout the big picture. The plan works out on a smaller basis once in 3 months or 3-4 times per year depending on the planning. In simpler words, strategic planning is the big picture and broad spectrum whereas the operational plan is drafted to be focused and specific.

Ultimate Guide to Event Management 3

By: Dr^Waqipedia

Part 1.1: Create a Vision

When I was first year medical student, I came out with an idea to project a medical outreach program in Kelantan, as our team named it 'Le Tour de Kelantan'. It's the pioneer project of 'Le Tour de' program that had been done since 4 years ago. Although the program was successful (since the participants enjoyed it very much) but the planning and management was really bad. I'm very sure of it because I was the project manager. It's not my team's mistakes. It's mine.

I could list it down one by one, all the 1001 reasons of my mistakes in planning and handling the project but what I realize the most is the lacking in my 'vision'. That's my biggest mistake.

The lack in vision cause impairment on my planning sight. I have the idea but I couldn't see the 'big picture'. When I couldn't see the whole picture, of course there will be a lot of loopholes in the planning towards the execution stage. Thanks God that I have great team and comrades who guide through and back me up.

Ultimate Guide to Event Management 2

By: Dr^Waqipedia

Part 1: Overview for Pre-Operative Stage

In the previous post, we have already learnt about the stages and gotten the general idea about what it is. In this post, I would like to share the overview of the pre-operative stage. I try to cover the most important parts and highlight what to do in order to save more time and work more efficiently in a team.

There are 4 'blocks' for the pre-operative stage, a process beginning from the top to bottom. I created this to help ease our mind of what is the most practical thing to do and to be prepared. Of course you can add and minus as you like or shuffle it based on the situation, but I hope at least it can guide you on planning, leading and monitoring the event or program.

Ultimate Guide to Event Management 1

By: Dr^Waqipedia

Stages  of Event Management

Anything you want to do, implement or make real, you start with a plan, work it out until the day of the operation and only then settle down. The concept is essentially the same in event management. Just to make it practical and easy to understand, I have divided event management into three parts; pre-operative, intra-operative and post-operative.

Ultimate Guide to Event Management: Prequel

By: Dr^Waqipedia

Dealing with numerous events and programs in previous years gave me the chance to learn deeper regarding event management. Of course, learning is not only from reading but also from doing, through experiences. If you learn the Cone of Learning, it states that reading or hearing will give you 10-20% of understanding but by doing or applying, you will learn more which gives about 80-90% of comprehension.

That's why, in any field of learning, whether in medicine or accountancy, what you learn in school is just maybe 30% applicable towards life because you didn't really apply it in life. However, once you start working, maybe a houseman in hospital or as an accountant at a big company, you will understand that it's totally different. That's the reason why people always talk about Street Smart Versus School Smart.

Project Management 1

By: Dr^Waqipedia

My Learning Process

For the last 3 years, I have involved in a lot of programs and projects from medical camp, conference, talk to carnival-type. I have experiences becoming the participants, the committees and sometimes, I lead the projects. I hope I can list it down one by one but what concerned me is not the number of projects or program that I joined or conducted, it is always about the management and the outcome of them. The outcome of those projects is greatly related to how we manage it.

From mistakes I’ve done and from experiences I’d gained I gradually learned from time to time the existence of project management. I bought books and tried hard to learn it by myself. Although I couldn’t apply almost everything in those books I read but I learned a lot from it. Honestly, I have never regretted joining or conducting any program because for each of them, it expands my capability and wisdom in dwelling with all the risks and problems in what-so-called ‘project management’.

Learning through reading and self application in life is two things that I did. I believed that the experiences would make the different. No need to worry doing any mistakes. Like an old friend advice me,

“If you feels that you had never made a mistake in life, then it means you had never tried anything new in life...or maybe you are traveling in a wrong path.."

Let the advance worrying become advance for thinking, planning and implementing.