Several months ago, I was enlisted to manage the redesign of our
corporate orientation. My team was
tasked with creating an event that would enculturate staff to the corporation’s
mission, vision, values and strategic initiatives and it needed to be relevant
for all staff across the system. The existing
orientation was 13 hours long with 17 different presenters. It had not been overhauled in about 10 years so the content was largely
directed toward the employees based at the main hospital campus; we needed to
start over and include the physician practices our fitness club. Our team
consisted of six core team members
who needed to attend most of were expected regularly attend all meetings and were
responsible for most of the work as well as five extended team members who
attended only the meetings they are needed for.
We officially close the project tomorrow and while we did accomplished the
goals and objectives of the project and our metrics all met or exceeded
expectations, there were stumbling blocks along the way that we could have
avoided. We use a standard, 3-question
post mortem:
- What went well?
- What could be improved?
- What lessons have you shared?
These questions helped determine lessons learned however the
phase-specific questions recommended by Greer (2010) would garner more specific
responses and recommendations.
The Beginning:
Chartering
What
could have been better?
Two hours before my first meeting with the project team, the executive
sponsor changed the primary objective of the project from reducing the hours of
instruction to ensuring all the content was linked to the mission, vision,
values and strategic plans. Since the
data collected from participants and organization leaders clearly showed the
need to reduce the time spent in orientation, I was a little confused by the
change. As it turned out, the executive
sponsor was simply using the project as a way to push her own agenda. In retrospect, I should have postponed the
kick-off and allowed time thoroughly re-evaluated the charter, metrics and
timeline. I had been waiting so long to
get the project off the ground I just pushed ahead. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I
realized how much this change affected the amount of work to be done and that I
might not meet the deadline. My own
flexibility was nearly the downfall of my project. If the charter included the right elements
from the start, we wouldn’t have needed any changes (Portny, Mantel, Meredith,
Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008).
What worked well?
With the new primary objective in place, I also needed to re-work the
metrics that were to be our measure of success.
Setting measurable objectives that one can track and trend at the front-end
of a project gives the team the requirement they are working towards and
informs you of when you have achieved success.
Our metrics served as a guiding light whenever we would start to get a
little off track or if there was even a hint of scope creep (Laureate
Education, n.d.).
The
Project Plan
What
could have been better?
The Nursing Education Department delivers a unit specific orientation
for new nurses so we included the organizer of this program as an extended team
member to identify conflicts, overlaps, and deficits between the two programs
as well as anticipate how the programs might need to change in order to work
together. As an extended team member, she
was not required to attend the weekly meetings but did receive written updates and
we had coffee a couple of times to talk about the progress of the team. Unfortunately, at implementation, I found out
she had not shared the information with her team so they were understandably
confused and upset by the changes that impacted them. At this stage of the project, having to
smooth ruffled feathers and rework some of the processes added undo stress to
the team and could have been avoided (Greer, 2010). Looking back I recall having a verbal
conversation about her role on the team and we spoke about communicating the
changes back to her team. In the future,
I will consider using a work-order agreement and put tasks on our project plan
specific to the expectation of communicating information back to the team
(Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008).
The Executive Sponsor of my project was also one of the people that
needed to re-write content for the revised program. Though she set the goals and objectives for
the project and even a few of the deadlines, she consistently did not meet the
deadlines she agreed to. Our first
session was held Monday at 8 am and she finally provided her PowerPoint
presentation at 6 am. Looking back, I am
not sure understood the time required to design effective learning (Murphy,
1994). This presented a very difficult
situation to deal with because as the executive sponsor she was supposed to
help work through the barriers the team identified not create more of
them. In the future, I will attempt to
identify the key points she wants input on and when we need her approval to
move on well in advance.
What worked well?
The Gantt chart is a project manager’s best friend. I don’t think I could have survived without
this tool. I used Visio to create a very
large list of tasks; I then linked them and created dependencies. Team members then estimated the number of
days to complete the tasks they were assigned.
After all of the tasks have a person assigned and time-frames
filled in,
you can see the end date of your project.
Having a written plan ensured we didn’t lose track of anything (Portny,
Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008). Every meeting the team would report their progress
on tasks and it was so fulfilling to see the bars changing color and showing us
our progress.
Implementation
What
could have been better?
Because the team champion and the executive sponsor had some time off,
the memo announcing the changes did not get approved and sent to leaders until
after the change had taken place.
Clearly this was not ideal but with so many moving parts to this project
we could not roll back to the old way. I
have since been introduced to a communication planning tool that I think would
have helped the team identify major points of communication in advance
What worked well?
Because we identified a gap in the communication plan, we needed to
implement interim measures to manage issues that came up (Portny, Mantel,
Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008).
Since the change only affects a leader when they have a new employee
starting work so we reached out to each hiring manager that had a person
starting to personally explain the new process.
Even though some of the information we were sharing was new and even
contrary to information they had recently received, the managers really
appreciated the personal attention from the team and the opportunity to ask
questions face to face. We will be
continuing with this practice until the organizational leadership gets more
familiar with the steps in the process.
References
Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to
rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.
Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Project management concerns:
‘Scope creep’ [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu
Murphy, C. (1994). Utilizing
project management techniques in the design of instructional materials. Performance & Instruction, 33(3), 9–11.
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.
