Week
2 Blog Post: Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”
by James Landon
A few summers
ago, I co-coordinated a summer performing arts camp with a friend of mine, PJ, an
orchestra teacher in the same district where I teach general music. The camp
was designed for performing arts students in grades 6-12 in band, orchestra,
choir, or drama and lasted 3 weeks in the summer. This project began in
November the year before and involved recruitment, marketing, hiring teachers,
selecting and securing facilities, instruments and materials, and basically
administrating the program from start to finish. Also, our supervisor for this
project was in a school district department that oversees all after-school
clubs, recreation, child care, summer school, facility rentals, and community
outreach and education programs. This created an overlap of roles and duties
between the co-coordinators and the supervisors at the community education
department.
Overall, this
project was a huge success. The final performance showcasing all the performing
arts groups was fantastic and the parents of campers were impressed and looking
forward to next year. However, the “behind-the-scenes” aspects of the camp
included some sources of issues and mismanagement. These issues included
communication, role identification, and clear documentation of implementation
procedures. Though the program from the perspective of students and parents was
a success, there are many steps the team members (co-coordinators, community
education department supervisors, instructors, and site staff members) could
have taken to eliminate many of these issues.
First,
communication methods and expectations were not established early on. Communication between coordinators and
community education were limited. Some teachers hired by the coordinators did
not respond to repeated emails or calls. The local facility staff did not have
contact information or reliable times for communication. Lastly, the
inner-facility communication system was inadequate. All these issues piled up
to make the sharing of information and reporting of problems even more
difficult than it should have been. As coordinators or project managers, PJ and
I should have created a document that clearly provided contact information and
availability expectations and then distributed this document to all members of
the team and all departments involved in the project. This would have provided
smooth connection between all members of the team, allowing problems to be
resolved quickly and effectively.
Second,
implementation procedures were not clearly defined. This summer camp program
had run the year before, but there were many problems and several changes
needed to be implemented. However, there were a number of basic procedures that
we had not anticipated or had not planned for. We should have established a
clear plan in writing for all necessary procedures such as instrument rentals,
elective registration, recruitment and marketing, and transportation issues.
Unfortunately, we were making these things up as we went rather than sitting
down with all members of the team to brainstorm possible issues that would come
up from these topics. This would provide a clear map for these anticipated
problems and tasks and when it came time to act, we would have a plan in place.
Finally, the
main problem we had in our project was the establishment of the roles of all
team members involved. This issue really ties into problems with communication
and implementation as well. From the beginning, as issues surfaced, we were
never able to determine exactly who was in charge of what. Emails flew from one
person, forwarded to another, forwarded to another and then back without
problems really being resolved. Meetings only involved some of the team members
and staff that was necessary to make the project really work was not included. There
are many ways to establish the roles of team members and these could have a
huge impact on this project. Portny et al. (2008) describes a number of
strategies including confirming team members’ participation, developing project
plans, drawing up work-order agreements, and creating work breakdown
structures. These documents provide
important information that establishes roles and clear tasks and duties
required of each team member. Greer (2010) also suggests a
responsibility/accountability matrix. These provide a way to “capture all of
your team’s agreements about who will do what on your project team” (Greer,
2010, p. 11).
It takes more
time up front for the project manager to create these documents at the
beginning, but the reward at the time of project implementation is well worth
the time and resources spent in the planning stages.
References
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.
