Project Evaluation Post Mortem

For my review “post mortem” this week I would like to use an example in my collegiate career at The Ohio State University. I was chosen as a part of an organization to run a large student run event on campus called “Scarlet and Gray Ag Day.” This day is planned by Ohio State students and area elementary schools are invited to come and rotate around to several dozen stations with hands on activities all centered around teaching the students a topic in agriculture. Needless to say, it was a huge undertaking and involved working with several committees and many different stakeholders such as elementary school teachers, college organizations, college students, companies around campus and supporters of the event. Although not an instructional design project, there are similarities. I served as the chairman of the event which could relate to a project manager. We then had several different committees or perhaps in terms of project management; teams. In order to take a closer look at the project and learn something from it, I used the questions from the Project Minimalist to evaluate it.

1.       Are you proud of the deliverables? If so, what’s so good about them? If no, what was wrong about them?

I was very proud of the outcome or deliverables which would have been the day in general, the student’s learning, and experiences. Many teachers, stakeholders, were very pleased with the quality of the day and the value that it held for their students. Many standards out of the elementary school’s curriculum was hit and the teachers were able to go back to their schools with ideas of how to use agriculture as a learning platform in the classroom.

2.       What was the single most frustrating part of our project?

The most frustrating part of our project was the complexity of the entire thing. The event had been done year after year and each year more aspects are added to benefit the event but provide hurdles for planning. With this complexity came the increased need for communication and organization which was not always there at times causing issues.

3.       How would you do things differently to prevent frustration?

Like I mentioned before, I would be sure that there was an increase in communication and organization. I would have may also added more committees/teams in order to spread out the workload.

4.       What was the most gratifying aspect of the project?

Talking to the teachers and receiving feedback from them and other stakeholders about the level of quality and usability of the day for teachers and students was rewarding because it felt as though the work throughout the entire year had paid off and was validated.

5.       Which methods worked well?

The committees had a group meeting with all of the other committees to report on their progress and receive updated duties if required. As the project manager, it was great to have those meetings in order to touch base and be sure there was progress in the right direction being made and collaboration of ideas being held.

6.       What methods were frustrating?

As college students, putting this event together was not our jobs nor were we getting paid to put it together. Therefore, a lot of students that were working on it may not have put their 110% effort into it. It would slow everyone down with one of these individuals and if they would delay responding to an email, it hurt the project a few times.

7.       If you could change something, what would you change?

As I stated before, I think that I would try to minimize the complexity of the event. I would focus on making the main event solid and quality without trying to add too many extra things before making sure the rest of it is planned solidly.

PHASE 1

Our audience and market was the elementary schools of Columbus, Ohio. It helped that year after year we have this event and have contact with the teachers of the area. This particular year, we communicated with the teachers and asked for their input on the event and what they could benefit from us teaching their students. We also held a workshop with the teachers who would be participating to have an overview of the event so that they could be prepared. Our team did an excellent job looking at the elementary school curriculum and standards and translating them into the interactive and hands on learning experiences at Scarlet and Gray Ag Day.

PHASE 2

 In the initial planning phases we had not planned for the growth that the event would take on and complexity that would then ensue. It would have been more beneficial to have stuck to the plan and not tried to spread our team too thin by adding more and more to the event throughout the year of planning no matter how beneficial it may have been. We had many supporters of the event financially and as a presence at the event. We needed each and every one of those supporters because we were limited by the finances of the event as well as facilities, transportation and the elementary school’s schedules. There were a few issues with vendors that may have been prevented by simply using clearer communication and having more experience working with vendors on the part of the college committee members.  Roles and expectations were clearly laid out in the planning meeting which worked well for setting up the committees and teams and as I said before, there were students that didn’t hold this project in priority. Their absence at some meetings was felt as it was important to have clear lines on communication each week when we would collaborate. One thing that should have been planned and communicated more clearly was the milestone goals. For some aspects of the project there were no milestone goals which didn’t motivate team members to accomplish them.

PHASE 3

The blue prints for the project were a little gray. We had ideas and goals to accomplish but throughout the year they were modified so many times they should have been a little more concrete for the team members to visualize and follow along with. Creativity was involved and all members of the team were involved in the blueprints. We needed input from each one of the committees or teams in order to make the blueprints or plan of attack on the project.

PHASE 4

I was very proud of my deliverables as mentioned before. All stakeholders delivered on their part. If one committee, supporter or other stakeholder did not hold up their part, the event would have not happened or had major problems which it didn’t.

PHASE 5

The test audience was the real audience in this case and the deliverables worked in the real world. We aligned the teacher curriculum with what the students were learning at the event which helped teachers teach their actual required curriculum as well as gave them ideas on how to utilize agriculture in the future for their classrooms. Because the nature of the project, implementation was fairly effective. Motivation could have been increased but overall the project was pulled together effectively with quality.

Overall, teachers comments would be the artifacts that I would point to uphold my opinion of success of the program. The artifacts that I would point to to suggest a struggle or frustration in the project would be the evaluation that the committee members or teammates returned. Many of them cited communication and organization issues within the team.

Greer, M. 2010. The Project Management Minimalist: Just Enough PM to Rock Your Project!