Distance Education

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”



I recalled a team project titled “Training Steering Committee” This event took place at work about four years ago.  The memory lived with me till today. Little did I know about IDT/ PM at that time? The idea was brilliant. It was initiated by the Director of training, my supervisor.  The purpose was to “Change the organization” by doing the following.
a. Develop adjunct facilitator’s for recurrent training due to agency expansion.
b. Revise agency orientation for new hires.
c. Revise existing and create a new agency policy on training.
d. Develop advance courses for clinical professional s in the organization.

 The director identified samples of employees from across the entire organization for representation. The response was quite compelling at the first few meetings, but the director did not use a Project Management approach. Murphy, (1994). The benefit of using a formal project a management approach is that needed expertise within the corporation can be identified and allocated to ensure that project accomplishes its goals”. 

The director consulted with the agency CEO, who was in support of the project, but the director failed to notify his immediate supervisor, director of Human Resources who holds the ultimate decision about the project.  The identified members were notified. There was an elaborate kick off meeting. At the meeting, the members were presented with the purpose of the gathering. The members were pleased to be part of the needed change.

       During the meeting, members volunteered to function as leaders and supporters of the sub groups. Other employees present were unwilling to participate because they were unsure about the need for all the work to be done. Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, and Kramer (2008) state “the project manager must take the initiative to figure out what the real needs are”. In addition, the leader should be able to explain the origin of the need. Not just an intention to change the organization. The rest of the meeting turned to an opportunity to praise the leader of the project for the brilliant ideas. 

There were four different sub-groups representing the four purposes of the committee. Each of them was assigned to work on the subtitles and produce a procedure, a policy, a new curriculum at the end of the project.  The details of the deliverables, timelines, and outcomes were discussed by each sub group at subsequent meetings as that was not discussed at the kick off meeting.  Level of commitment was vague after the first general meeting. The resulted in role changes from one meeting to the other.
 In some meetings, the number of employees in attendance determines the assigned roles.  The process became a nightmare.  Meanwhile, there was no statement of work from each of the assigned subgroup.  The work breakdown was created as seen feasible by each group. They group were not reporting to anyone for supervision during the work stages.  At the end of the project, a lot of unpredictable troubled challenges emerged.
  •  Members of this committee were being penalized for abandoning their primary responsibilities because the idea was not presented for approval in the first place. Greer (2010) States “the project manager must define the project concept clearly enough so that he can get support from the key people in the organization”.
  •  A number of documents were developed i.e. Adjunct facilitator’s process. Revised agency orientation, training policies, and couple advanced curriculum were developed by personnel with no IDT skills. None of the draft documents was approved.
  • The committee was informed that no single committee can create or revise agency policies without formal approval of the board members. According to Suchan, J. (2007). “Ability to get buy-ins from the entire stakeholder will help you accomplish the project goals by reducing project cycle, and streamline the approval process”.
  • The Project leader was asked to dissolve the project and the members. Portny, et. al., (2008) identified three basic activities in project management. Planning, Organizing, and controlling. With what I know today, I cannot recall a serious level of planning during the process. It was an excellent thought, and he sped to action which ultimately ended in lack of implementation.
  •  The project had a kick off meeting, but the meeting did not spell out the roles and responsibilities, clarify deliverable and time lines, identify members commitment. The project was ongoing for about two years before it ended.
At the time of this event, I was new to the organization. Because of my role, I have less knowledge about the procedures of operation, though; I was in support of my director of training.  Based on what I have learned in the previous courses about organization leadership, functions and operation, I know that the director took a number of personal decisions because he has worked there longer, he has very excellent people skills,  and could persuade his peers to see things his way. I will also like to add that, the procedures of initiating an idea were not clearly stated as what we have now.

Some positives  
The process was an eye opener for the organization. From the crooked foundation laid by the director of training, the organization experienced major expansion in the past two years. Some of the ideas generated by the committee are currently revised, and presented to initiate the change process.

The director was able to create a strong, cohesive team to work on the project, but the communication amongst the team was ineffective because of lack of supervision. 

The agency will start a new hire orientation curriculum in January 2012
There are 39 adjunct facilitators across the organization. I am currently leading the project on adjuncts.
Currently the organization have  policy and procedure committee that are devoted to revising old policies and create new ones as needed based on Medicaid/Medicare funding.
Employees in need of advance courses or CEU’s credits are being supported to accomplish the goals outside of the organization. 

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


4 comments:

  1. Folashade,

    Emmanuels, your post, and my post, all have one streaming idea that is the reason for the failure of each project, the planning phase. Clear objectives and deliverables were not present, and in your case roles and responsibilities. As you said, because of the lack of direction, implementation was difficult, and when it came to evaluate the effectiveness of the project there was not a clear standard of what the finished product should look like.

    Another common thread in our posts, was that each of these supposed failed projects were evaluated “Post-Mortem”, deficiencies were clarified and remedies were set in place. Although we recognize that the projects were failures, that did serve a purpose. This shows the importance of the big E in ADDIE, Evaluation. By evaluating what went well, and what did not, we were able to start new projects to meet the new more defined objectives.

    Sincerely,
    Eric

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  2. Hi Folashade,

    The challenges that emerged were parallel to my experiences during a project prior to this course. The absence of authorized project charters, work agreements and the engagement and oversight of key stakeholders are among the things to have diminished the success of projects. A responsibility matrix would have identified some of the overlapping responsiblities and need of approvals along the way. I am incredibly thankful to have the opportunity to not only reflect but learning how to manage my projects more effectively. We will undoubtedly be the positive influence every project needs!

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  3. Hi Folashade,
    I agree with my fellow cohorts that proper planning and evaluation could have help reduce some of the challenges obstacles. I am glad that the director was able to create a strong and cohesive team but he should have implemented some kind of supervision. In addition, as you stated the Director failed to use a Project Managers approach. Instead of allowing members to volunteer as employees, a good project manager would have assigned duties. Furthermore, the lack of communication from the director to the supervisor also presented a challenge. I am glad you shared this project. It was very informative.

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