Lessons Learned from a First-Time Project Manager

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.