Blog Assignment: Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”

Figure 1: The stakeholders

I recently coordinated a project of preparing for two matric farewells (proms) that my eldest daughter attended this year. This was the first matric dance in the family and it is befitting that I look back at what went right and areas that can be improved in preparation for the younger children whose prom is in a few years’ time.. One of my responsibilities as a mother and a project manager was to give directions, guidance, and to delegate tasks to the various stakeholders in order to ensure that all aspects of the project were done satisfactorily as requested by the project owner (Partny et al, 2008). The project owner in this case was my daughter.

            After receiving the sign-off from the project sponsor, my husband, I had to discuss the work breakdown with my daughter and the rest of the stakeholders (her siblings) in order to ensure that the project would be “completed on time, on budget and with excellent results” (Greer, 2010). The timeline was really a challenge as the project had to be completed within five months, though she thought we should have budgeted for it on the day she was born. The work breakdown structure formed the needs for the project and we had to identify the responsible person for each task (Laureate Education, 2010). The needs were as follows: two dresses to be tailored, hairstyles, facial make-up, shoes, photographer and a car-hire to escort the lady of the day and most importantly finding a partner for the dance. The project manager had to consider prerequisites and make decisions on what was possible and impossible within a time-line, budget and available resources for each task in order for the project to succeed. I had to say “no” to the car-hire and requested for some volunteers among the stakeholders for other items so as to control the “scope creep” such as facial make-up (Laureate Education, 2010).

Figure 2: A dress in making

 I consider the project to have been successful as the project owner was extremely excited with the outcome at the end. If I had to do the project again I would firstly change the venue for the steering committee meetings to be held away from the dinner table. The meetings were not at all planned and they should never have been part of the meals to avoid the screaming and throwing of plates around the room. I would also adhere more strictly to the budget, as I was way over the limit in this first attempt. For the second event, we only managed to get a “date”/ partner two weeks before the event. My daughter had turned down all our suggestions until the last hour when she informed us that she had finally found a partner. Due to lack of time, as stakeholders we had no say, no interviews conducted.  We just appreciated the fact that we did manage to find a consultant (i.e. a partner) in the end. All consultants in the project have to go through the same screening processes and be part of the planning.

My recommendation to all the parents who have to conduct an event like this one is to plan the project way ahead of time, at least a year in advance. An important lesson learned from this project is that even in family projects, there is a need for money to be put aside to deal with things that come on short notice (the unexpected or incidentals). Laureate Education (2010) advises that “’Scope creep’ is inevitable; build in time and money to deal with it ahead of time”. For instance, we had our budget for shoes planned well but we could not find the size of the shoes for the type we had budgeted for and ended up having to buy the expensive type.

Figure 3: The end result

References

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

Laureate Education. (Producer). (2010). Project management concerns: Scope creep. [Video]. Retrieved from http://mym.cdn.aureate-media.com

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.