Lessons Learned “Post-mortem”

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Looking back I can recall working with the technology department in my school district for the summer to help prepare for summer training. The summer training was supposed to be two weeks (one week for Elementary teachers and one week for Secondary teachers). Committees were formed at the beginning of the planning stage and each group was given their duties for the training. I was assigned to a group of two other people and we had to create all the registration documentation including badges, bags, registration letters and confirmation information for participants and facilitators. This seemed like a simple task however that proved to be wrong. A project succeeds when the desired outcomes are accomplished on time and on budget (Portny, et al., 2009).

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Phase 1: Needs and Achievability - The project deliverables were not fully thought out. When thinking that we were responsible for one set of materials for the training we were given several other tasks that were unexpected. Private schools were supposed to be invited to both trainings and the time allotted for them to respond was insufficient. Invitations to these schools should have been sent at least a month in advance but were sent only two weeks in advance of the first week training date. There was no research done on what the actual needs of the teachers were. After speaking with some of the teachers who applied to attend the training many were disappointed in what was being offered and opted out of attending. Just as Dr. Stolovich discussed in Project Management and Instructional Design, knowing what is assigned may not be what is actually needed was the case in this project. Sending out a survey of some type to see what teachers felt they needed more training on would have helped to plan what was offered. Also this would have given an idea of how many teachers would actually be interested in attending the training from the Elementary and Secondary schools.

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Phase 2: Creating a Project Plan - The summer trainings in the past were only planned for one week. This summer the director decided two weeks were needed; how wrong she was. First of all, the team members that were assigned to this project were misplaced. The group I worked with was totally wrong. There was one young lady who had no creativity because she was a person who worked with data only all year long. She did not know how to use Microsoft Office Publisher which is used to create the badges, posters, flyers and other materials that needed to be sent out. The other young lady did not like to work past her eight hour day so she was never available when we had to work late. In addition to preparing for the summer training we were still responsible for doing our daily jobs. We were in the group of people that Charles Murphy talked about in Utilizing Project Management Techniques in the Design of Instructional Materials. We were assigned team members who were to assume the additional responsibility of serving on the project team. Our assignments for the project did not take precedence over our main job responsibilities but were secondary duties (Murphy, 1994). Specific assignments were to be completed by my team to make sure the project stayed on schedule. (Murphy, 1994). There were many warning signs that two weeks of training were not needed. The applications were not coming in at an enormous rate and our team was asked to start calling teachers to see if they were interested, if they received the emails and applications and none of the private schools invited had responded to our invitations. The director still ordered materials for two weeks of training thinking the teachers would respond at the last minute for both trainings. The other “red flag” was the facilitators had not been informed of which days they were expected to attend and train and it was only three weeks before the first week of the training. This was a huge mistake and we had to pull the District Technology Training Specialist to fill in some of the spots for trainings. Dr. Stolovich discussed flexibility during the project life cycle and preparing for the changes as obstacles arise (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009) and this was one of those times. This affected my group because we were preparing materials not only for participants but for facilitators as well.

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Phase 3: Creating Specifications for Deliverables -  The designs that were created were agreed upon by my teammates and me. However the director decided she wanted to make changes after all of the materials was created. She decided to change the logo for the training which meant going back and redoing badges, flyers, letters, posters, and everything that had the original logo. What a chaotic time because the training was approaching and the company making the bags and other items for the training needed the logo and the one sent had to be changed. Fortunately they had not begun to print so there was an additional charge for the imprint of the new logo. This unexpected issue could have been avoided by having the director make a definite decision regarding the logo from day one.

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Phase 4: Create Deliverables - As discussed in phase three the deliverables were created to the satisfaction of the team however the director made an executive decision to make changes late in the process. The director gave our team the freedom to create the designs for the training materials but never said a new logo would be made. As a team we should have asked more questions and we could have avoided “double-work” in the design of the materials for the trainings. Also, the director should have been more specific in her desires for the materials and what was actually “wanted” by her. In order to make sure external sources that are also in the development of materials for training have ample time to produce project materials our team should have allotted more time for the unexpected. Needless to say we were able to get the new logo to the company and the materials for two weeks of training (in two different colors) were delivered on time to our district.

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Phase 5: Receipt of Materials and Preparation - Although getting the materials out to the prospective participants and information to the company for additional materials was a nightmare our team got the job done before the training was to begin. Participants never saw the chaos that our team felt to get everything completed on time so the other groups could get their projects completed. The materials were very nicely created and delivered to all participants and facilitators. Although there were some negative comments about the “new logo” everyone was happy to get the materials they received. It was suggested by my teammates and other teams on the project that the logo be changed back to the original.

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In closing, from the onset the director of the department had the attitude of this will be done my way and only my way. This was a definite disaster from the first meeting. Two weeks of training were scheduled but because of untimely notice to potential participants and facilitators the two weeks of training turned into one week. These meant that we had and still have materials for a second week of training sitting in a storage closet at the district. There was not an interest in participating in the summer training because of the trainings offered and short notice. Teachers had made arrangements to go on summer vacations and facilitators had other obligations from their companies. The one week of training that did take place was not well attended. Persons who signed up for the second week of training were asked if they could attend the first week to have more participants to fill the training classes. There have not been summer trainings for teachers since that disastrous summer training two years ago. Managing resources, people, money, and time was not done well and the director did not give good communication to the project teams, potential participants and facilitators. In the future planning needs to begin in a timely manner to give all stakeholders time to prepare for training. Also the director will need to hear the ideas and suggestions of others and seriously consider that someone else’s idea may be better considering time constraints. The barriers that were discussed in Practitioner Voices: Barriers to Project Success were mostly created by the director. In most cases “scope creep” comes through the client and not the PM or in this case the director. Additional time should be included in the planning stages to handle unexpected problems that will arise. Dr. Patti Van Rekom stated in the same media resource that scope creep is inevitable and time and money should be built into a project ahead of time to deal with it (Laureate Education, Inc., n.d.) A real performance analysis needs to be done to avoid a lot of the problems that arose in the planning of the summer training (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). Projects fail because of several basic mistakes and recognizing these pitfalls early project managers (directors) can effectively respond to the situations and re-direct the project towards success (Portny, et al., 2009). I contributed my knowledge of creating materials in Microsoft Office Publisher that were used in all the material designs. I also contributed several hours of overtime that was desperately needed. Although the team I was a member of completed our task on time the overall outcome of the project was not a success but there were definite lessons learned.


References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010). Practitioner voices: Barriers to project success. [DVD]. Baltimore, MD.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (n.d.). Practitioner voices: Overcoming scope creep [DVD].

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Project management and instructional design. [DVD]. Baltimore, MD.

Murphy, C. (1994). Utilizing project management techniques in the design of instructional materials. Performance & Instruction, 33(3), 9–11. Copyright by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Used by permission via the Copyright Clearance Center.

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