We have to make sure to use the term Project in
front of Post-mortem or you will drift into results of death per say, but when
speaking of Project Post-mortem it refers to “taking stock at the end of a
project…to review over mistakes or problems that have been learned” (Greer,
2010, p. 42). For this assignment, we
were asked to recollect a project that was worked on either personally or
professionally that did not result in the best outcomes. To understand my Project Post-mortem, I will
use certain questions to analysis this professional recall aspect.
I can remember when I first started my journey in
the online (asynchronous) learning environment for my first master’s. Majority of my courses would always be
divided into group project assignments.
I can not get into depth details, but I will describe how our group was
divided into around 4 or 5 students. We
were working on developing a project that consists of a Curriculum &
Instructional Plan. At the beginning, the
different parts were broken down for everyone to know what they were to work
on. Throughout each week, we were to
report what we had started for the project.
Each week, if someone wasn’t dropping the course they were not
contributing to their portions. If they
did contribute, it would be something that didn’t have anything to do with
preparing the plan needed. So before the
project was due, one or two other group members and I would have to go back and
try to fix and add information to other’s work.
So this would result in our
project not being the best it could have been if all members would have done
their own parts.
Analyzed Questions from recall:
What contribute to the project’s success or failure?
The contribution to the project’s failure was that
stakeholders or the members involved in the group did not always give their
best work or none at all. This problem
brought about a strong frustration between us as a working group, especially when
it came down to the grade of the entire project. The contribution to the project’s success was
that the most determined team member’s ability to get their portions done and
still have some time to jump in to add ideas that were slacking on other ends.
What parts of the Project Management (PM) process,
if included, would have made the project more successful? Why?
When working on a team with others, “project
managers should approach changes of scope in a business-like fashion” (Greer,
2010, p. 35). In my example we
definitely tried to be calm about the situation and how it happened. In the PM process, I feel “discussing the
impact with the project team” (Greer, 2010, p. 36) using this tactic more
throughout would have helped our project results. We would try to communicate with the members
that were slacking or just not contributing at all. This required us to speak with the instructor
who would basically inform us to still try to get it done with the two or three
that were left off; but this project was designed for a bigger team, which
changes had to be made to correspond to who were willing to work more so.
Reference
Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your
projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.
The class situation you described seems to be similar to the experience I had working on a group project for this master's program. Group projects are great if they are managed correctly by the course objective and the instructor. In my case, it seemed that the project was a way to cover more content in the short 8 week course. It was eye-opening for me to see the challenges in online group work, and would approach the process differently if I have the ability to do so. There was a lot of re-work in our project during the last week, and I felt sorry for the group leader that week, because it became very apparent that many of the submissions in the previous weeks did not connect to the project objectives and each member. There was a lot of time spent reworking the project in attempts to make it more cohesive. I do agree with you in that this makes it hard to feel like the project was successful and of high quality.
ReplyDeleteI do however, feel that the academic group project has a different feel than outside of academia. I don't have experience outside of academia, so I may be mistaken.
I had a similar experience with the same project early on in this program. It was difficult trying to get a time for us to communicate due to our time zone differences. We had to keep waiting for e-mail responses before doing our part of the project. Some of the members could not wait for email responses so they decided to do their part how they sought fit. The problem with this was each of our parts built upon each other. When it came down to organizing each separate piece into a uniform document, it did not work. Some of the parts were completely off topic, the objectives were not the same, and some even did their part based on a completely different audience. Unfortunately, the leader for that week had to spend even more time, rewording and adjusting each person’s share just so it made sense. It was almost like the leader did the project on their own because of lack of communication. Not only is that not fair but deadly because it is one thing to get a bad grade, get an extension or have to redo it to pass. If this was a real project for a client, we could have lost the client, screwed something up and potentially lost our own job. I feel like some people are just not responsible enough to work with others.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that unfortunately, this was my experience with that project also. I found that some members are very structured and felt that the members on their team should post when they did. This micro-management led to anxious team members who felt that they had to assume others' roles prematurely. A post-mortem not only looks at what went wrong, but also the achievements and techniques that worked. If the focus is put on what worked, it could positively affect future projects.
ReplyDelete