Ok, so I have been wracking my brains over the last couple
of days, trying to think of a project I have lead that would be appropriate to
talk about for this blog discussion. To
be honest, project management as presented in this course is pretty foreign to
me. I have planned a thousand lessons,
helped out with more than one large scale school or district project, but on
the whole I have never taken the reigns as a project manager. Or so I thought. It did not occur to me until I had a
conversation with my sister last night when she reminded me that I planned my
own wedding. She added, “as far as I’m
concerned, that’s a project and a half” (Brothers, personal communication, May 9, 2012). I chewed on this bit of information for a
little while, and reflected on the process of planning my wedding, and yeah, she
is right, I was the project manager for my wedding, and that was a pretty big
project indeed.
So let
us break this wedding project down, and see how I did. I am going to do this based on the questions that
were posted with this week’s blog assignment from an article on project post
mortem (Greer, 2010).
1. Are you proud of the finished product? Yes I am.
The wedding went off without a hitch, and to this day I get a lot of
compliments on how fun the wedding was, and how everyone seemed so happy that
day. I have added a link to see some pictures of the final project. Feel free to have a look.
2. What was the single most frustrating part of
the project? For me, the most frustrating thing was being so far away from many
family and friends who were part of the planning process. For instance, my aunt from Michigan made my
dress. It is tough to do a fitting when
you live a thousand miles apart. It did
require some extra travel for me in order to get this done, but it was well
worth the time.
3. What would you do next time to avoid this
frustration? I am not sure I would have
done anything different in this case. I
made the choice to have my aunt make the dress, and so I knew I would need to
plan a time in the summer to make sure I could visit for a fitting.
4. What was the most gratifying part of the process? For me the best part was watching everyone
interact, and enjoy him or herself. I
worked very hard to make sure that everyone
had what he or she needed to really enjoy the experience. I feel like we took great care to satisfy all
of the guests, kids, adults, family and friends.
5. If I could change anything about the process,
what would I change? There really is not
anything I would change. We accomplished
the goal of having a really fun wedding that would honor the vision shared by
my husband and I, but would also satisfy our families in terms of the formality
and grace of the ceremony. We did this
in a way that provided an excellent experience for our guests, and we did so
well within our established budget.
6. The stakeholders in this wedding took a very
active part in the process. To be
honest, this wedding was more for my family and close friends than my husband
and I. The two of us were very content
to have a private ceremony in the Denver county courthouse, but we also knew a
wedding was something our families really wanted. So we went ahead and planned the
wedding. The stakeholders took an active
role in many ways. As stated earlier, my
aunt Julie made my dress. My sister (the
maid of honor) took care of all of the travel arrangements for my Michigan
family to come to the wedding in Denver.
My mom arranged to have a wedding shower when I was visiting Michigan
the summer before my wedding. My aunt
Carol and Uncle Phil made and decorated our wedding cake. A group of close girl friends of mine took
charge of decorating both the ceremony and reception areas, and my
sister-in-law helped design and print our wedding invitations. I took care of securing the spot for the
ceremony, and reception. I also made
arrangements for the catering, bar, DJ, and on-site babysitting for our friends
and family with young children. My
husband managed the budget, and he and my brother-in-law had the all-important
job of selecting which beer would be served at the reception. In all, this was a very team oriented
project.
In
reflecting on this week's discussion of controlling scope creep, I would say I
did a pretty good job. Did we experience
scope creep? Yes, particularly when it
came to the guest list. As stated in
this week's video "Overcoming Scope Creep" Dr. Burdovich discusses
how difficult it can be to control scope creep when supporters are asking for
little favors here and there (Van Rekom, Achong, & Burdovich, n.d.). It feels the same when your mom is asking you
to invite just one more of her friends or distant cousins. It can be very hard to say no.
The
good news is that the wedding was successful, and I can now look back on that
project from the viewpoint of a project manager. Would the information I am learning in this
class have been helpful in the project planning process? Absolutely.
Who knows, maybe if I succeed in this class, and become a successful
project manager and instructional designer, I can apply those skills and become
a wedding planner. Or maybe not.
References
Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects (Laureate
custom ed.) Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc. (p. 42-43)
Van Rekom, P. (Writer), Achong, T. (Writer, & Burdovich, V. (Writer) (n.d.) Practitioner voices:
Overcoming "scope creep" [Web]. Retrieved from
https://class.walden.edu/webapps/portal/framset.jsp? tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=/webapps/
blackboard/execute/launcher?type=Course&id=_551248_1&url=
I too had a hard time thinking of a project I lead. Your example is actually a good one. During this course, I often think of a job my friend has; catering. Her job relates much more to project management than my jobs do. Many of the catering projects are weddings, and we all know, those must be planned very well. Good post.
ReplyDeleteI never really thought of it but you are absolutely correct in this being a project management item. There are SO many details involved in the planning for a wedding that I believe it compares very well with project management. I am glad that it went off so well and I appreciate the incorporation of the audio/video component.
ReplyDeleteThanks for an interesting post.
-jeff
This is a great example of project management! So much of what enables success in the professional world is what enables success in our personal lives. Successful stay-at-home mothers truly are the CEOs of their families and incredible project managers. Your example of scope creep for your wedding is a good one. I think scope creep can be most difficult to manage when you see the purpose and have a personal or emotional pull for the thing that is causing or inviting the creep.
ReplyDeleteI have the same problem as you in that I have not had much experience with projects, let alone project management. I think you did a great job with this "project" and it sounds like the outcome was more than you could ask for! It's interesting how we don't realize that real-life events are definitely in the form of projects! =)
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGenise
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your project management experience as a wedding planner. Indeed weddings require a lot of planning and management in order to have everything in order and perfect for that special day. It made me remembered planning my own wedding and wanting to have every detail and every piece of thing in order and perfect, delegating tasks, managing the teams members, communicating, and revising plans, etc. I did not think of myself then as a project manager. This course and your blog post opened my eyes, to see that not only technical things requires project management, but also some simpler things in our life. Once planned and managed well can turn out to be successful.