MODULE 7 PAPER

Danielle Dukes
ARIZONA STAE UNIVERSITY  OGL321
 Over the past two months, I have gained familiarity with the many aspects of project

management and how they come together. There are many moving parts in this realm and

balancing the expectations is challenging. Meeting stakeholder expectations and management

targets, all while maintaining team morale is a tricky endeavor. Since first taking the quiz “How

Good Are Your Project Management Skills?”, I have improved my score by almost 10 points.

However, upon finishing this course my score was only at 75 so that signifies that there is

opportunity for me to grow still. I have grown in certain areas, specifically understanding how

crucial timeline and team morale are. Throughout each scenario, I found it difficult to keep up

with the timeline and had to make choices along the way that compromised my budget and team

morale to meet these deadlines. Overall, the timeline seemed to be the most crucial factor and

sacrifices had to be made to meet expectations. In my experience managing, team morale has

always been extremely important, and people are at the heart of my managerial approach. There

have been tough times at my work but creating a culture of appreciation, where people can laugh

and have fun, has always proved beneficial during pressing times. However, these scenarios have

taught me the importance of communicating with my team through daily stand-ups, one-on-one

meetings, and intermittent reviews. Upon reflection, I remembered how frustrated I have become

at work when my manager does not take the time to check-in with me. Regular check-ins are

more than just ensuring that team members understand their role and expectations. They also

serve the purpose of making your team feel heard, valued and apart of something bigger. Even

though communicating with team members is not a new concept for me, learning how to manage

communicating while executing other important aspects was. It was quite complicated to carve

out the time to have these daily stand-ups and on-one-ones with strict deadlines that I had to

adhere to. However, when I did not make the time, my team became frustrated and would not
complete as many tasks. It reminds me of the saying “happy wife, happy life”, if you have a

content team, then they engage in a manner that allows for a successful project.

With that being said, my personal approach to project management is meeting

expectations through the lens of my team members. Although I have deadlines and requirements

that I must adhere to, I know that I cannot achieve anything without my team. My approach

entails creating an environment where my team members trust me because they feel valued and

appreciated. The communication standards I set forth, enable tasks to be completed because there

are clear expectations, and my team feels inspired to help me reach the shared vision. I inspire

my team by including by including them in the process in the form of daily stand-ups and one-

on-one meetings. The intermittent reviews were useful when team members were lagging, as it

seemed to remind them that they each have expectations to meet as well. There were certain

tradeoffs that seemed inevitable, specifically when trying to balance the timeline, budget, and

team morale. Knowing that I could not sacrifice team morale, I had to choose to compromise my

budget or timeline. From multiple scenario attempts, I quickly realized that the timeline seemed

more critical than staying within budget. In a perfect world, I would easily be able to finish a

project without sacrificing any of the three but too many contingencies came up to do that. It was

a struggle to push my team to meet deadlines with various unexpected events, such as

competitors poaching my employees and moving up their deadlines. My main focus quickly

became maintain team morale while pushing my project toward completion to ensure that we

held a competitive advantage. The budget was something that I was never able to follow and I

believe this is why I was never able to break 700 in my scores. From my experience within these

scenarios it seemed impossible to stick to the budget and finish on time with acceptable team

morale. Throughout my different attempts, I did notice that sacrificing budget was better than
sacrificing the deadline, and my scores proved that. It led me to believe that it must be normal for

project managers to regularly go over budget and to some extent, it must be expected from

stakeholders and upper management. In real life projects, I would anticipate these overages and

explain to upper management and stakeholders why having leeway with budget is important if

they want the project to be an overall success. Building good relationships is also part of

successful project management and that cannot be done if we are sacrificing people to save

money. I could not rightfully tell my team that I did not care that they were frustrated because it

was too much work all for the sake of saving money and this was the biggest challenge.

The challenges that arose during all my scenario attempts help me understand which

strategies were most useful when driving my project toward completion. Over the past ten years,

I have held multiple management positions where I oversee 5-10 people at one time. Even

though this is lower level project management, it has given me experience that enabled me to

make connections with our work this semester. Project management skills can be useful in most

jobs, even ones where you work alone because you would still be managing deadlines and

budget to some extent. My biggest take-away was being reminded that everything must be done

through the lens of people, because they are the heart of projects. In my opinion, there is no

deadline or financial constraints that trump the importance of people, their morale, and the part

they play in meeting project success. You may not be able to walk away from a project feeling

like you met all expectations, but you can walk away knowing that you have done right by

others. Knowing how disconnected I have become in work environments where my manager

does not communicate with me, motivates me to take a different approach. An approach where

people come before the dollar and the belief that money will follow when you have a team that is

happy to be on board. As I move forward and graduate in spring, I will be looking for jobs that
enable me to utilize my education and grow. These new jobs will present opportunities for me to

use these strategies in the real world and I will be interested to see how similar the events are.

Overall, I have gained a better understanding of the various components under the project

management realm and the art in balancing them all. I am grateful to have had the opportunities

to play project manager throughout the scenario attempts and felt like it was an extremely

valuable experience.

For those about to start their journey of project management and practice with the

Harvard Project Management Simulation, I would tell them to not overthink it at first. You will

be tempted to over analyze your strategy before even beginning and that will not be the best use

of your time. Instead, I suggest running through each scenario a few times with limited deep

thinking. Going through each scenario in free form, enables you to gauge what strategies are

natural for you and enable you to see if your instincts are correct. In my first attempt at Scenario

A, I must have spent 30-45 minutes reading the objectives and my learning material, trying to

create a master plan that allow me to get a high score. However, this ended up being a waste of

time because my most valuable strategies were learned through previous scenario attempts. With

each experience I gained more knowledge which I took with me to the next attempt. I quickly

learned that the most important aspects of the project were the team members, deadlines, and

budget. Balancing these three components is not an easy task but this is why projects need

project managers, to ensure that all expectations can be met to some extent. My experience in the

scenarios taught me that team member morale was of the utmost importance, followed by

deadlines and then budget. I wasted a lot of time trying to stay within budget, only to realize that

to do so I would sacrifice both team morale and the timeline. It seemed like if I had to make
sacrifices, then one would be better than two and that strategy served me well throughout the rest

of my scenario attempts.

We all come to projects with strategies and experiences that play a vital part in driving

our projects toward success. However, there is always the inevitable contingencies that come up

throughout different projects that force you to resort to a different plan. Anticipating these

contingencies is critical if you want to maintain a competitive advantage while completing your

project. Moving forward through the different scenarios, multiple things came up such as team

members getting in a car accident and competitors pushing out a higher end product. My

experiences taught me that being aggressive with my staffing and task completion in the

beginning was key. By completing more tasks from the get-go, even though it temporarily

inflates your budget, you make room for the unexpected events that you will encounter. If a

competitor poaches some of your employees in week 7, you will not be under as much stress if

you are already ahead of schedule. There is also a pattern of the budget being impossible to

adhere to if you want to complete your project on time. Perhaps others had a different

experience, but from the class discussion posts I learned that others shared this struggle. I spent

too much time trying to stay within budget and was never able to achieve that goal. Instead, I

found it more valuable to focus on completing the project on time with a team that was content

and motivated to help me. We may not have finished within budget but many times we

completed the project early and my team was happy which made me proud. You will discover

your own strategies and I encourage you to share those with your team members throughout the

discussions each week. The best piece of advice I can give is to read through your classmates

discussion posts, you will find many tips and tricks that others share and this will bolster your

projects.