Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”

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

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/USW1/201320_04/MS_INDT/EDUC_6145/Week%202/Resources/Week%202%20Resources/embedded/pm-minimalist-ver-3-laureate.pdf

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.