My Party Project Post Mortem

One of the best ways to learn and grow is by reflecting on past experiences.   Projects are no different in this regard, so I’ll reflect a bit on a personal project that was gratifying, but could have been pulled off with just a tad fewer glitches.   Some years ago, my daughter and son had graduations in the same year.  My daughter was completing high school while my son was finishing junior high.  Both had expressed an interest in having a party, but had also mentioned that they’d like some other types of recognition as well.   At the time, my son’s favorite line was,   “Of course, it doesn’t hurt if it’s green!”  

In deliberating over whether to give gifts alone or throw a huge party, I began to count the costs for invitations, food, decorations, new patio furniture, a tent, etc.  I began to visualize what the whole set-up would look like, where the food table would go in the backyard, who we might invite, who would handle the music, so on and so forth.  What I failed to do is commit to the project.  While shopping for new patio furniture and a tent with the idea of having guests eventually, I could not confirm whether we were having a party or not.   And believe me, the kids asked over and over again about our plans.   As the executive team member, sponsor, and driver for this project, I was unable to plan effectively.   I had not allocated resources in time or money, nor had I assembled a project team to work a plan.    I let my team know that we were indeed having a party about two weeks before graduation weekend, at which point they were very excited and began to pitch in wherever they could find a need.  The result was a huge shindig with over fifty guests.  We had great food, fun, and nice weather, but the event exhausted every ounce of energy I had.    Other complications included having to call for additional financial support from my ex-husband.  He was glad to help, but could have forked over the cash earlier if he had known about our plans.   I had also planned to coordinate games for the event, but I ran out of time.  

If I had approached this shindig from project manager’s perspective, I would have known that project management is about planning, organizing, and controlling (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008).   As cited in Lin (2006), Baumgartner (1963) defines project management as the actions involved in producing project deliverable items on time, within cost, with required reliability and performance.  A major part of project kick-off is understanding why the project is being undertaken, determining project outcomes and products, estimating resource requirement, and identifying stakeholders.  Stakeholders include anyone who is affected or interested in your project as a supporter or detractor.   Greer (2010) advises that all stakeholders need to be involved in a project early.  If they are not engaged early, the oversight can cause “re-work.”  As an example, I could have gone to the grocery store once instead of 3 times if I had known that my ex, a supporting stakeholder, could contribute resources.   A budget would have helped as well.  

Concerning planning, a project manager needs to have a good handle on all of the variables that affect a project’s success.  A five finger checklist of these variables includes time, resources, expertise, quality, and scope (Budrovich, n.d.).  Once a project is scoped, changes in either one of these areas necessitate modification in other areas.  If I had scoped the party project, I could have used something similar to a statement of work which is a written confirmation of what a project will produce and the terms and conditions under which the project team will perform the work (Portny et al., 2008).  In a professional organization, it’s generally used to gain project approval.  In this case, I could have used the agreement to let my children know what needed to be accomplished.  The formal agreement would have collectively moved us into a planning phase where our efforts would have been more focused.  Our project team could have allotted more time, resources (human, monetary, and otherwise) to make the event happen, and we could have mapped our plan with a schedule and responsibility matrix, and a communication plan.  In the end, I would have been much less exhausted, and the workload would have been more evenly distributed.    

References

Budrovich, V. (n.d.). Practitioner Voices: Barriers to Project Success [Video].                  Laureate Education. Available from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/

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

Lin, H. (2006). Instructional project management: An emerging professional practice for design and training programs. Workforce Education Forum, 33(2). Retrieved from http://voc.ed.psu.edu/projects/publications/books/Fall2006/WEF_fall2006.1.html

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.