Module 7 1

Justin Mulholland

OGL 321

MODULE 7

Prof. Cristen Mann

10 July 2020
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Project Management

Effective project management is an important part of most any company. The ability to

ensure budgets, time lines and other management initiative are met, is a good projects managers

wheel house. Many companies entrust the project managers with their teams building blocks as

well as their well-being. This is why effective project management is essential to a company’s

ability to remain profitable in all areas.

Part 1 “How good are your project management skills”

In the beginning of this class I felt I had an average grasp on what effective project

management was. I had taken other classes where project management was an underlying focus

and was able to grasp a lot of the concepts. I have always enjoyed the realm of project

management due to the challenges that it brings.

This class was the next step in my major and I was excited to see what new topics and

tools I would learn. I came into the class pretty confident that I would do well on the course

knowledge checks. I expected papers about project management after mundane reading that was

similar to past classes that I had taken. Boy was I wrong. The first task in the classes was to take

a quiz on the overall knowledge of project management. I felt confident that I would do well.

When I began to take the quiz there were many areas of project management that I had not

experienced and it defiantly showed at the end of the exam. I was excited to see if this class

would be like any other.

After reviewing more of the syllabus, I began to see that the simulations were going to be

a weekly occurrence. This is something that none of my other classes have had. I really liked the

concept of being able to practice skills that we had learned about in the weekly module by using

them in these simulations. I took the first simulation and was immediately dumbfounded by how
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bad I did. I went into the simulation being confident in my ability to lead a team. In my 12-year

career in the Air Force I have led many different types of team, each time growing as a leader

from the lessons I learned. This simulation was different though. I found it hard to balance a

budget and timeline, all while trying to keep moral at the forefront of priorities. I redid the

simulation and still had a subpar score, scoring just 15 points better than my previous time. I felt

confident that I had a grasp on how to increase more dramatically than prior attempts. On my

third attempted I went backwards scoring 30+ points under my first attempt. I repeated these 6

times and finally settled with a 30-point gain from my first attempt. I felt defeated. Over and

over I tried to think what I needed to do in order to boost my score and make the simulation more

successful.

On the next day I began my forum post. I explained how my simulations went and also

where I felt I could increase my score. The topic of that week of class was mentorship and I

remember thinking back to a great mentor of mine, and thinking about what he may say about

the best route to increasing my simulation scores. After I posted my feedback, I began reading

the classes post and to my surprise many of the other students felt the same way. I was glad to

see that I was not the only one who struggled on the simulation. This did however open up a

great learning opportunity for me. I began to read post after post, seeing if I could use another

tactic to try and increase my score. To my surprise the class had a great deal of suggestions on

how to increase my score. I was very pleased to see that the class as a whole offered help and

suggestions that were not one-word answers and actually had some depth. Another area that I

really liked was that when someone struggled the rest of the class rallied around them and gave

them tips and tricks that would help them to increase their scores on the next simulation. It was

great to see the community help others to expand in their overall knowledge of the career field.
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Throughout this class there are many areas of project management that have learned a

great deal about. One area of focus that I find important to decision making in project

management is the forming of a team. The team is the foundation of the project and team

cohesion is essential to successful product. This cohesion is what will lead to what is known as

the three cornerstones of decision making. These cornerstones are the decision, the decision

process, and the decision maker or actor. (Buede Pg.5) These cornerstones have opened my eyes

to a lot of what a project manager needs to do to have a successful team. I have always been the

type of leader that focuses on my people and making sure they have what they need to

accomplish the mission. After reading about these cornerstones I now realize that the systematic

ideals of the cornerstones can be the framework of the being a good leader. Numerous times in

my career I have hoped for roadmap for how to conduct team building. It is often very difficult

as a leader to understand what dynamics are needed in order to make a the right choices for who

to include on your team. After reading this article I see now that it is less about the perfect people

for your team and more about making those who are already on your team mesh and be

successful.

Team building has many stages when the team is being built. There are five stages that

every team goes through. Those stages are forming, storming, norming, performing, and

adjourning. (Abudi) It was refreshing to see these stages again, as I had studied them in 2012

when I was being promoted to the first supervisory position. When a member makes Staff

Sergeant in the Air Force they are required to go to Airman Leadership School. This was the first

time I had heard about these stages of team building. After 3 weeks of being at ALS you are

introduced to this concept. The best part of this is for the past 3 weeks the instructors have been

forcing the class through the team building process without us even knowing. The instructors
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teach the class and use real world examples that the class had witnessed with those around them.

It was a great experience because you are able to learn about the process and see it work. I have

found that in this class I was able to hone in on those skills that I have previously learned. I think

that what I liked the most about re learning these skills is the ability to see these skills used from

a different lens. In the Air Force the teams are forced together there is no choice in who is

coming on board or who is hired. The only chance for new members is if someone new is

assigned to your work center. However, in the civilian market we are able to see that project

managers need to form their team often pulling from many different resources. I learned through

the reading that I was actually lacking in primary skills needed by project managers such as how

to hire and what skills to look for. I have never had to do this before and it was great to see a new

perspective on skills that I have used for the past 8 years.

The last area that I feel that I have grown in is the ability to work with and identify

stakeholders. In Project-Management.com’s blog we see that keeping stakeholders actively

involved has many benefits if well-regulated. The blog states that “It gives opportunity to

individuals or groups to express their ideas/issues/concerns over the project, It gives a sense of

accountability and enhances responsibility, and It enables effective risk identification and

response planning” just to name a few. (What is Stakeholder Analysis) Prior to this class I

struggled with keeping stakeholders in check with projects that I led. My problem always went

back to the changes that were constantly asked to be made. I often found that I spent more time

re-doing work because someone higher up in the chain of command asked to have something in

the project reworked. It was always very frustrating but I would smile and make the changes

often staying late to make up the time needed to ensure the project wasn’t delayed. After taking

this class I see that I was just being an enabler and hurting the project and my team by not
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sticking to the original plans that were already approved. I think back no to past projects and how

allowing those changes ever put my team in a bind by adding more work and stress to an already

hard project. I think that moving forward I will ensure that I optimize the use of change request

and be more forthcoming when explaining to stakeholders how much additional work and set

backs will be caused by their request and show them that sticking to the current plan will be the

most beneficial.

Part Two: Simulations

The Harvard Simulations were the best part of this class. I felt like I learned more off of

one simulation than I ever could have imagined. These simulations gave me an opportunity to

actually see what the outcome of my decisions were and also gave me the opportunity to go back

again and make different decisions to see how outcomes would change. Another great part of

these simulations was the ability to cross talk with our classmates about new ways of increasing

our effectiveness. Some of my best practices are as follows.

 Using highly to medium highly skilled workers with some outsourcing to

accomplish task.

 Focusing on the points system to see where the least amount of points are located

and understanding that there is less of a cushion and any small mistake can cause

a lot of points to be lost.

 Slowly adjusting the completion date to a sooner one and giving yourself a buffer

in case setbacks require more time.

I choose to use highly skilled team mates because I was able to accomplish the most

amount of task with these individuals. On multiple occasions I tried to use medium skilled

workers and ultimately busted my time line. I had found that I was able to average 7-8 tasks per
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week per person using these members. There were multiple simulations that I had used these

skilled workers in scenarios where I should have had a big setback but was able to quickly

overcome.

The next advice that I learner on the 3rd module is what to focus on based on the points

breakdown. This advice was like a light bulb went off and is soon able to increase my points to

over 700 on multiple occasions. I was constantly doing the opposite and felt that management

was most focused on those areas that had the most points but I soon learned that those points

were slowly lost where other were lost quickly. I had found that when I actually prepared for the

upcoming project and done my “research” on where points would be laid out I was able to form a

better game plan than just going in blind and hopping for the best. Another area that this helped

was in the decision-making process when I was trying to decide where to put my focus next. I

would think back to the break down and make decisions based on that. It also helped me take

care of my people by ensuring things such as training were done at appropriate times.

The last advice that I feel made me successful was adjusting my due day up so create a

buffer should I need more time. This advice was something that saved me on multiple scenarios

and although I felt like I would not need it ended up being the determining factor for a positive

completion. I typically would choose from the start of the project to finish two weeks sooner

than management required. I found that this was the best time to do so because I was able to keep

spirits high and my team had minimum stress. I was pleased to be able to use this tactic because

prior to this I seemed to have workers who were board and I found that this caused them to

remain happy throughout the duration of the project.

This class has shown me a lot of new ways to approach project management and, has

shown me the importance of how effective leadership is required for positive project completion.
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I feel that I will be able to take not only the lessons learned from reading but also, the lessons

learned from the simulations with me as I grow in my leadership studies. All of these thing

emphases just how important effective project management is to a company’s overall success.
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Works Cited

Abudi, G. (2020). The Five Stages of Project Team Development [Web log post]. Retrieved July
07, 2020, from https://project-management.com/stages-of-team-development/

BUEDE, ROBERT A. POWELL AND DENNIS M. (2018). Project managers guide to making

What is Stakeholder Analysis? (2020, July 02). Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://project-
management.com/what-is-stakeholder-analysis/