Running Head: MODULE 4 PAPER

Module 4 Paper

Theodore Evans

OGL 321: Project Leadership

Professor Pandya

June 12, 2020

Project management and project leadership both require a significant amount of planning
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and preparation to ensure that the final product can be delivered with as few problems as

possible. Of course, no amount of planning can subdue the infinite amount of uncertainties that

exist in any given situation, so the leader has to be able to keep a project on course even when

something unexpected occurs. The decisions that managers have to make to combat these

uncertainties are going to greatly impact any overall project and ideally need to be based on the

information they have available.

Consistent Attention and Review

Something that can easily be overlooked throughout the course of a project is

remembering to review where the team is and what tasks are being focused on. There can be a

lot going on during any given moment of a project, especially depending on its size and scope. If

there is no system in place to ensure that each aspect of a project is being analyzed and reviewed

for quality, then that leaves a good amount of room for errors to occur. This can also lead to the

project being thrown off schedule, which can be a huge detriment to the entire team, as others

may be depending on one person’s deliverables in order to make progress with their own. Calum

Bateman (2020) strongly urges project teams to use a system of planning and peer reviews to

help combat any potential issues and help keep the project on track. He focuses on a need for

checks and balances so that the team works as a cohesive unit to ultimately reach the final

product. Teams that do not utilize something similar to this system of peer review and check-ins

leave themselves open to missing something important or not finishing their deliverables on

time.

Planning and Consistency Within Scenario C

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Having now completed three different scenarios, I do feel more confident in my own

ability to interpret what my expected deliverables are and how I need to reach them. Before

starting Scenario C, I decided to take a different approach, and instead of just reading through the

objectives and having a moderate understanding of what I needed to do. I spent about half an

hour writing everything down and planning out how I wanted to go about combating any of the

issues I thought might occur, such as a change in staffing, budget, or a shorter deadline. Sure

enough, this time around my deadline was shortened by five weeks, which did not surprise me in

the slightest. Since I did not know how much shorter the deadline was going to be, I only moved

it ahead by three weeks, to begin with, which clearly was not enough. I played around with the

number of staff I had on the team and what their level of knowledge was and I found a good

combination of about four people at a medium level. This helped the project start off well from

the beginning and made me feel more confident about proceeding once the deadline change took

effect.

In addition to the more thorough planning I did, I also made much greater use of the

status reviews and planned for developing two prototypes prior to launch. My focus this time

around was to see how much review and analysis of the work that was being done would affect

the overall result of the project. I typically had a status review set for every other week, which

gave the team time to review anything that was going wrong and course-correct, as needed. This

seemed to pay off in my later attempts of the scenario, as I found myself getting much higher

scores than I was after the first few attempts I had completed. Previously, I would have thought

that the prototypes and abundance of meetings would have been too time consuming and would

have left the team without enough time to complete their tasks. What I have come to learn from

this is that I was completely wrong - frequent check-ins and working on multiple prototypes
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allow the team to correct their own mistakes and make the final product a much more functional

model.

Consistency in my Own Work

While I do not have an extensive background in project management, I do have a pretty

thorough understanding of why consistency is so important in your work. In one of my former

roles as a Program Director, I was responsible for producing a lot of data and documentation on a

consistent basis either every week or every month. I did not find this to be such an important

part of my job as I had many other responsibilities but my supervisor helped me understand that I

was definitely wrong. The information I was producing was vital for other team members to

have because it could influence the decisions they had to make about their own programs. If

what I provided said that we were going to be under our forecasted income for the month, then

that gave them the opportunity to focus on their programs to try to make up for the revenue that

we were missing. We all knew that our revenue was essential to keeping our programs running

and our employees paid, so when my numbers showed that we may come up short, the rest of the

team worked to make up that difference. If I did not provide this information on a consistent

basis, then I would have been letting our revenue decline even more so because no one else

would know that we were not reaching our goals. While this does not directly reflect what

occurs during the project, I think it highlights the importance of consistency in each individual’s

work.

Meetings and Why They Matter

Meetings are one of those things that many employees dread, typically because they think

they are a waste of time and can usually have just been said in an email. In many cases, this can

be true, as plenty of senior leadership in organizations does not know how to run an effective
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meeting. Meetings can easily run over time because there is either no agenda or it is not being

followed and no one is keeping time so that items are all given an equal amount of time. While

agendas are a great tool, the facilitator and the attendees need to start by knowing what the

overall goal of the meeting is and why they are having the meeting. All items on an agenda

should be geared towards reaching the intended goal and by the end, everyone should have a

good understanding of what they are responsible for (Brown, 2020). The meeting needs to be

focused on having the team understand what issues are being addressed and what their roles are

in resolving them. Once the end of the meeting has been reached, then all objectives and

responsibilities should be reviewed so that each individual has clarity on what they need to

accomplish. If meetings are not run this way, they can seem relatively pointless and frustrate the

team members in attendance because they do not see it as a good use of their time.

Meetings in Scenario C

Since I cannot personally run the meetings in these scenarios, I have to assume that they

are being conducted in a way that is similar to what I have described as an effective meeting.

This means that they provide a lot of clarity for each of the attendees both in the status reviews

and the individual meetings and help everyone understand what our objectives are. As the

leader, I have to find the sweet spot where I am conducting the right number of meetings, as it

can negatively impact the team if I am doing too many or too few. If I hold too many, then I run

the risk of boring the team and impacting their morale, and if I hold too few, then I am not

properly supporting them and run the risk of causing higher levels of stress. I have found that

more individual meetings towards the beginning of the project help keep especially the lower-

level employees on track and supported and doing more status reviews later in the scenario help

provide clarity and keep us focused on the goal. I am not assuming that I have found the best
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combination at this point, as I think I can do a better job of interchanging each type of meeting

throughout the project and that will be the most impactful.

Personal Experience with Meetings

As a former manager, I have plenty of experience with small and large meetings. I have

learned more about what not to do as the person leading meetings more often than I have learned

about what does work because there are so many people that have no idea how to run a useful

meeting. Many meetings end up being too long and do not end up achieving what the facilitator

wants because everyone is so disengaged by the time it is over. What I have taken from many of

these meetings is that the first thing I need to do is state the purpose at the beginning of every

meeting to help everyone understand what needs to be accomplished. I now tend to make short

agendas because most topics tend to take more time than anticipated, so I have to make them

concise. I have found this to be most effective in one-on-one meetings, as having a clear

objective helps keep us focused on the task at hand. I want any individual walking out of a

meeting to feel as if it was a good use of their time and that they are more clear on what they are

personally responsible for and what needs to happen. Meetings need to be seen as a resource for

information and support, not as a waste of time that happens just because people think that they

have to hold meetings.

Controlling What We Can and Making Decisions

Some project managers may think that they need to be able to control and influence

anything and everything that goes on during the course of a project. What they may not

comprehend is that they are so many variables and possibilities that are outside of their control,

so it is probably best to focus on what they can control and how that can influence their

decisions. If managers are unable to focus on what they can control and make according
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decisions, they are limiting what they will be able to do when problems surface later in a project.

As Cledin says in Managing Project Uncertainty, “if we are unable (or unwilling) to make

effective decisions, then our options shrink to a single path” (2017, p. 65). What occurs around

us is going to influence the decisions we make but if managers are not open to accepting what is

going on, then they ultimately limit their ability to make change and support their team. Making

decisions is a vital part of a leader’s job because they are the person that will influence the course

of the project and the responsibilities of those working with them.

Controllable Variables in Scenario C

In these scenarios, I have a set number of factors that I can change and influence at any

given time until the scenario is complete. In order to understand how much of an impact each

variable has on the project, I have to be able to isolate each variable and see how changing one

thing at a time affects the whole project. This level of isolation gives me the chance to see how

each factor works on its own and once I see an outcome I approve of, I can then start changing

other variables to see how they work together. Normally the first few things I change are the

deadline and the number of staff and work my way from there to see how I can best support the

team. How the team responds to the changes and how many tasks are getting completed on a

weekly basis heavily influence my next decisions. I have to take into account how the team

responds and what is being produced so that I can make changes as necessary to work towards

meeting the demands of the project. There is no one right answer from my perspective in any

given situation, but I can take in the information I have to make changes that I think will

positively impact the project as a whole.

What I Can Control in My Work

As a leader, I can only control so much, and I have to be willing to accept that there are
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things outside of my own control that could potentially cause issues at any given time. I have

found that the decisions that I make that are geared towards supporting my team are always a

better option in most cases. The project will not get done if I do not have the support of my team

and vice versa, so I consider the feelings and impact on my team whenever I have to make

important decisions. There does have to be a tender balance though, as I have experienced that

holding people’s hands through a project does not tend to work out in my favor. What I have

done in the past is take in as much information as I can and make an informed decision that will

support us moving towards the completion of the project while at the same time taking into

account the needs of my team. As I have said, there is no one right answer in most situations,

but I can use my skills and knowledge as a leader to make the most informed decisions possible.

By adding these different aspects of project management together, a manager can expect

to see that their team is able to work more effectively in the face of uncertainty. Every

hypothetical possibility cannot be accounted for but a team can be probably prepared to face the

unknown (and known) with the right amount of support and leadership. These are not the only

aspects that will impact any team’s ability to handle uncertainty and make decisions but they

should have a significant impact overall.

References

Bateman, C. (2020, June 6). Get it Right the First Time by Brad Egeland. Retrieved June 11,

2020, from https://www.mindgenius.com/get-it-right-the-first-time-by-brad-egeland/

Brown, C. (2020, March 12). Better Projects. Retrieved June 11, 2020, from
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http://www.betterprojects.net/search?updated-max=2020-03-

13T11%3A15%3A00%2B11%3A00

Cleden, D. (2017). Managing Project Uncertainty (p. 65). Routledge.