Project and Scope Creep....

As I gather my thoughts, contemplating the day’s snowfall and shoveling, I consider a previous project I once worked on. One I remember too well, and, to this day I am unsure has finally been completed.

Consider management requesting to have the course you are an instructor for be “upgrade” to the next level of instruction.

There were two, I feel, dominate scope creep issues that impacted this project. First, a delay in the ability to interact with stakeholders--those outside the organization; this sounds askewed, but true. As a team, we discussed what we could do, researched as able, to fulfill the requirement with what we felt we were able with our hands tied; even my inexperienced in project management told me this was wrong and caused undue delay and stress on the team.

Without going into detail, as a team, we did our best to move past this restriction, finally, returning to management, explaining what we were able to find, but insisted the need to converse with the stakeholders. I learn in project management the importance of stakeholders, which inturn makes me wonder if other issues dictated the initial directive.  Lesson Learned: When embarking on a project, ensure the pending project has the appropriate backing/direction. Once cleared to proceed, ensure everyone, including stakeholders, are part of the ENTIRE project.

Secondly, no real projected completion date, which also meant no project schedule. We looked at the next meeting--established from the last meeting, but nothing further down the road. The magnitude of this project needed a schedule to illuminate all possible risks to the project completion date. This included the instructor’s course schedule--courses continued through this process with adjustments to each subsequent iteration, and to officially establish a completion date.

Managing issues is very important for the success for any project, including identifying, documenting, and communicating issues to those involved (Lynch & Roceker, 2007). 

Bottomline, if you have a project, no matter the size or importance, you need to establish a schedule and utilize all stakeholders.

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Reference

Lynch, M. M., & Roecker, J. (2007). Project managing e-learning: A handbook for successful design, delivery, and management. London: Routledge

Reflection on Communication within Project Management

       Image you are at the mercy of a team member sending you information, it impacts his submission deadline, as well as yours. Now consider the use of email, voicemail, and face-to-face methods for conveying your urgency. 

Here is such conversation between 

  

Mark—who has the information, and       

 

Jane whose waiting; and used email, voicemail, and face-to-face to try to obtain the information.

Jane's Email--was like… hey Mark, umm, still need that data--unsure what that data was as it was not identified, but Jane needed it. The first sentence gave me the impression that Jane was poking fun at the fact Mark had to attend “that all day meeting”. To me, Jane’s voicemail, her tone and reflection of her voice provided the importance of the information she was waiting for; the face-to-face, even though I encourage this over email or voicemail, lacked the urgency she displayed in the voicemail. The face-to-face came over as a casual conversation and not one where the sole purpose of the conversation was the need for information. 

In all three cases, Jane lacked the detail of what the data was supposed to be, and nor did she indicate her deadline—the date or time.  Jane did provide an alternative, emailing the data, verses waiting for Mark’s report to arrive—the report contained the data she needed for her report.

Reflecting on Jane and Mark, my office, and  Portny et al (2014) Project Management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. I recognize, and will convey, the importance of relaying information in a manner that fits the media to which it travels.

We know an email,  

 unorganized, running together, lacking clear purpose or need is pushed to the wayside—maybe not the trash, but close. In this electronic media age, emails reach individuals easier; they are not required to be in the office, at their computer. 

As an instructor of an information report, I told my students to write the subject line in

such a manner to catch the eye of the reader; the same applies here. Write emails to catch the eye of the intended reader, without unneeded distracting information increases the probability it will be read. Ensure all information is clear, lacks confusion, due dates, brief explanation to why the information is needed, and end with appropriate acknowledgement. In addition, before sending, assign an importance or use options to set up a read receipt. Do not blame the recipient for delay in sending information if you forget to give all the details.

If you know you are a poor email writer, and lack the time to do a face-to-face

conversation, consider calling and leave a voicemail. Here too, there are considerations for an effective voicemail message. Forget the monotone, as that will drive someone to accidentally delete the message. Speak in the same manner as if you were face-to-face; interject a sense of urgency in the tone of your voice without shouting; and have simple notes to guide you in what you need to speak on. Follow-up with an email, incase the voicemail gets deleted and there is no means of knowing they listened until a gap opens up affecting project deadlines.  

Face-to-face (f2f) should be considered your first option in conveying information as you can influence their attention span—on you, and obtain immediate feedback whether they understood the conversation and tasking(s) associated with it. Understanding the individual you conduct an f2f enables you to know what approach

to use—formal or informal. Formal has the individual sitting upright, full-undivided attention, while informal allows them to relax. In either case, when seeking information make sure to convey up front the need for the conversation, what you need—do not be vague, deadlines involved, and alternatives to provide the information to you in a timely manner.

Bottom Line:

No matter the method of seeking or conveying information, never forget to remind folks the impact everyone has on the project, it is a team effort, and everyone needs to pull his or her weight for the project to succeed.

Reference:

EDUC 6135 Week 3 Blog Assignment Retrieved from http://mym.cdn.laureate-media.com/2dett4d/Walden/EDUC/6145/03/mm/aoc/index.html.

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Post Mortem Review -- The Negative and Positive

Setting the stage:

Location/exact job description will remain nameless, my position was of one of the team members. We did have a main campus and a second location that influenced some of the issues being described below.

Scope of the project was to provide a snapshot in time of their current training for a specific group of employees--all falling under the same job series.  We were given access to the current career path structure, their learning management system (LMS) and told to go forth and prosper. As we began sifting through the material, we realized there was much more we needed and started the ball rolling to obtain the material. Eventually we produced the desired product.

Review of the project using Greer (2010) Project Post Mortem review questions

From www.pdu4pm.com/

• Let’s start with frustration or warning signs--communication or lack of direction between leadership and team members impacted information gathered, documentation of collected information, and the final report, all requiring unnecessary extra work.  Utilizing all available methods of communication would have minimized this issue. Weekly or bi-weekly meetings, whether in-person or on the chat/video software that connected each user on the closed server, program very similar to Skype or Google Hangout.

• Second negative issue was the personnel selected to join the team. There seemed to be a trend of veering away from hiring instructional designers that actually possessed experience with the Analysis portion of ADDIE. In hindsight, and if I was on the selection board, I would have asked for examples of their work illustrating their knowledge or provided an opportunity to illustrate during the interview.

• Ouch, here comes number three negative. Was there timely feedback, and the answer was no. Often dragged out, lacked clear direction, filtered through various interpretations; and how to fix it I believe is to communicate via written channels--document. Each team created their own operating procedures, and was not until late in the project was one central operating procedure developed and eventually followed.

• So let us move to the positive side of this project. Would worked well was the use of workshops that brought in subject matter experts (SMEs) under one roof, working together to develop a list of job task, subtask, and steps; as well as identifying knowledge, skill and abilities (KSAs). Out team worked so well to enable the SMEs to brilliantly develop a list of tasks that fit their career paths.

What did I bring

So what did I bring to the table to help the project eventually succeed, remember earlier, there were issues.  I took ownership of every piece of the project assigned to me.  I brought my background to help analyze the data. I gently encouraged my teammates to complete their portion of the project, stay focused, to communicate and not be a stove pipe of information. If I found a more efficient method of gathering data, that stayed within the established guidelines, I shared it.  If information was already gathered from a previous project I ensured other teams were not duplicating the effort, no need for redoing an activity. I led by example, even if others, but not all, would not follow

Project Manager Roles

Now that I have ranted about a project, lets look at how the roles in the project manager and how they could improve it if we started all over again.

Let me say we had two project managers, one on the client side and the other on the contract side--where I was. Both worked hard, but we still struggled to get it right after the third project. I would consider a pause button should have been pushed to keep control of the project to examine how things were done, select the best practices to collect and document the data (Portny et al., 2008). When an anomaly appeared in the next project, push that pause button again, agree upon the necessary changes and then press on.

As I indicated earlier, communication was a major player, influencing individual perceptions of management. The lack of communication caused individuals to do their own thing, this would stop had a operating procedure been established after the first project on the contract, and been communicated to the team as a team allowing all to share. Portny et al., (2008) pointed out the importance of open, two-way communication when there are separated office (on-site/off -site) locations.

As one who is about to enter a new position, it would be a shame to repeat what has happen.  It is up to me to take the lessons I learned from this set of projects and knowledge obtained from others, and do better.  

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References

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Project Management in Education and Training

It is time to learn about Project Management (PM)....

Does proof-of-concept or scoop creep sound familiar? Those are just two phrases we will encounter...

Understanding project management in education and training I feel is vital for an instructional designer, because, at times the PM may not understand what ISDs do and can bring to a project...

Stay tuned...