Since October 2023, students in the Project Management module have been able to choose from a wider range of business projects outside their own company. They can now also support projects run by social and ecologically oriented organisations in the greater Hamburg area, such as Hanseatic Help e.V., Regionalverband Umweltberatung Nord e.V. or the Sternenbrücke children's hospice. The aim of this new programme is to prepare students for paradigm shifts and offer them new challenges that strengthen their ability to adapt flexibly to changing circumstances.
Project Management for a Good Cause
Lena Desken, Sophia Cotte, Paula Groos, Jule Dülsen and Franziska Katharina Voß supported the ‘Patchwork - Women for Women against Violence’ advice centre as part of the module and gained important insights into the work of a social advice centre: ‘For all of us, dealing with such a serious and sensitive topic was a completely new experience and it was important for us to be able to make a contribution,’ said the students about the project. ‘By reorganising the telephone hotline, which plays a central role in counselling, we were able to take some of the pressure off the employees in their work. The hotline is managed by full-time staff and volunteers and the entire telephone system was very manual, costly and time-consuming. Our aim was to overhaul the telephone system and ensure accessibility. In the end, we developed a modern cloud-based telephony solution that saves a lot of manual work and can be flexibly adapted to the number of active volunteers.’
However, in addition to the work results, the organisation of the teams is also a key component of operational project work and an important success factor. Jule Dülsen and her team organised themselves in such a way that certain topics and tasks were divided up and they updated each other in weekly meetings. This worked very well, also from the client's point of view: ‘The dialogue was uncomplicated and flexible and we always enjoyed it. We are delighted with the support from the HSBA students and the results of their work. Thanks to the new cloud-based telephony solution, we are much easier to reach for women affected by domestic violence or stalking and can invest the time and money saved in counselling and new projects. This represents great added value for Patchwork staff and our clients,’ say Patchwork ’s full-time employees Lena Osterholz and Annette von Schröder.
The company project work is part of the project management module, which is carried out in the 4th semester of the dual Bachelor's degree programme at HSBA and consists of a theoretical and a practical part. In the theoretical phases, HSBA teaches basic methodological knowledge for working on projects. The actual realisation of the individual projects follows, where students can apply the methodological content covered in the theory phase. At the end, the results are presented to the companies or organisations. The project task should reflect the basic characteristics of a project such as complex, novel, unique tasks, clear objectives, time limits, limited resources and teamwork.