Matthew Poland

OGL321

Looking back at the beginning and how good at project management I was compared to

now is remarkable. When I first began project management I did not know much or have any

knowledge and understanding of project management. I had no idea how much actually went

into managing a project, I thought it was so surface level and it was just completing tasks along

the way until you reached the end point of the project. Reflecting on what I know today, I know

that project management is much deeper than that and has many levels. I now know and

understand how to manage people and expectations, I understand how to create a scope

statement and exactly what that entails. Understanding the different steps in project

management will allow me to flourish in my current role and in future projects. I think what

was big for me is learning how to balance and prioritize not only a projects budget, but also my

team's morale and the project timeline. I learned that doing all three of those together is no

walk in the park and there are a lot of adjustments along the way that need to be made.

After my experience with the Harvard business solutions, I learned that my leadership

style and approach is transformational leadership. I tend to focus on empowering my

employees and focusing on making sure they are happy and thriving. MY belief is that you can

only take a company or project as far as the capabilities of your employees. By ensuring the

development of my team, we can continue to develop the project and company. During the

simulations I learned quickly that it is near impossible to satisfy all areas of team morale,
budget, or timelines. My approach was to focus on keeping my team's morale up and trying to

keep them as happy as possible. My suggestion is figure out the right complement of

employees to keep everyone focused, not stressed, and not bored. If you can do so then you

can try and stay on task and get the project completed near the deadline. To me the budget

was not my top priority because if I am able to develop a high-grade product, I can make up

what I lost on the budget in sales and ownership. I found that my biggest challenge was

maintain the budget however, and I know that in a real-life scenario I will not have a choice but

to stay within budget. Being able to learn how to make the proper adjustments to a project to

ensure you stay on track and able to complete your project. This is one area from the

simulation that I could have done better and possibly learned how to make more changes that

would have benefited my project and team.

The takeaway that I found to be useful that I can apply to my professional career, is how

to be an efficient project manager. In my current role I am a business platform lead for my

district, which means I must organize and develop material for our period planning meetings, as

well as develop business goals and plans for the district. This class has given me the ability to

understand what I need to do, how to organize the project, how to delegate tasks

appropriately, and how to effectively communicate to my team to ensure no confusion.

Additionally, I can check and adjust now and have an entire plan for my project as opposed to

just feeling like I am winging it or am unprepared. Another big thing that I am taking away from

the class is regarding ethics and morale's when it comes to project management. I learned

about Padding which to me was astonishing and really made me not trust any contractors that I

have received quotes from, or from any that I may receive in the future. I will say though one
positive is that I will have more knowledge to question projects in the future, questioning is

always good and now that I have knowledge of project management, I can ask the right

questions and understand time frames that I am given.

Project management is going to help me to become the most successful version of

myself, and I can apply what I have learned to anything or any project of any scale. In every

aspect of my current role I have to use planning and prioritizing. The learning styles I have

picked up from this class will allow me to elevate and confidently lead others while maintaining

an ethical approach to project management. I think not only will this help me in my professional

career but also in my personal life at home. I do a lot of home renovation projects and I know

that I will be able to apply this learning to those as well.

 Area one of focus I have to say is your team and the team morale. You have to

ensure that you are focusing on how your team is feeling in the simulations. You

can pick and choose the skill level for your employees and how many employees

you have. You have to use caution however when choosing these settings, if you

pick too few employees or their skill level is too high, you may end up with

employees who are bored and unproductive. Higher employees or skill does not

automatically mean you will complete more tasks. You will need to also consider

how many meetings you are choosing and how frequently. Something I found to

be helpful and provided some assistance was outsourcing some of the tasks, that

way my team was not overwhelmed completely. I found that the optimal choice

for me at least was 3 to 4 employees with a moderate skill level, that seemed to
 be the best choice. It prevented my team from being too stressed out as well as

not getting bored.

 The second area of focus I would suggest is not getting stuck on the budget. I

experimented with many options, including staying directly on budget However

if I stayed on budget my team fell behind and my workers became stressed. I

also tried to overspend in the beginning to get really ahead of the tasks that I

had to complete and then lower the budget later on to compensate. I found that

by going over a lot in the beginning and lowering later actually did not help, I was

still behind on tasks and did not finish on time. The best solution I have is to

spend slightly over consistently and not worry about finishing within budget, you

will get better scores if your team is happy and you are finishing on time.

 Lastly, I would say that the prototype aspect had no impact in my opinion. I tried

to use multiple prototypes, and just one prototype, I did not notice any

differences in my project's completion regardless of which option I choose. I

would encourage you to dive deeper into the prototyped to get an

understanding of them and how to properly utilize them, I think that I did not

fully grasp the significance of the prototypes. If I understood them better,

perhaps I could have done an even better job on the simulations.

 The critical trends I noticed were that the project had the same end date time for

most of the simulations, and some of the trends were thrown off with

unforeseen circumstances that arise in simulations, making sure you understand

the complete scope of the project so that way when circumstances change you
 can adjust accordingly. The trend I noticed was that the tasks continued to grow

and the number of tasks that need to be completed is large and completing

them on time will require the proper decisions and adjustments.

 Overall I would say take the simulations seriously, and do them as many times as

you can. Even though they are just simulations, they give you great insight into

project management and how challenging it can be to manage multiple moving

parts. If you can grasp these simulations, you will have a head start on actual

projects and in the long run will be able to understand how to manage budget,

morale, and deadlines more efficiently and effectively. Good luck to you all!