Module 7: Final Paper

Raymond R. Quesada III

College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, Arizona State University

OGL 321- Module 7

August 11, 2020

 PART 1

I think that so far I have learned from Project Management and its skills are that

planning and planning out all moves is the most important step in any project. No matter

the size of the project it’s important to plan out dates and a budget and also plan for any

delays or problems that can arise. So far I did know that it is really important to have

very clear and interactive communication. I always knew that it was really important to

have a well-communicated plan for everyone. I know it is also really important to

establish deadlines and schedules to make sure everything is coming along on the

track. It is new to me to make sure that risks are planned out. I think it is really important

to make sure risks can be managed and controlled when they occur. For example, it

would be really important to create something such as an impact and probably charts

and risk analysis and contingency plans. I did learn a lot about what I can improve about

my management skills, I learned that I have more to learn about planning out projects

and work. I need to learn more about planning so I can handle more complex projects.

In the characteristics of Project Managers, I can see myself having very good

organizational skills and flexibility. I can see myself working on my communication skills.

The only skills and tools I’m used to using are planners or schematics to plan out my

projects and keep up with deadlines. I think learning more about project management

can help me professionally by being able to handle my work and events more calmly

and professionally, so I’m grateful for what I have been learning from this course not

only for my current job but my future self too. I've also seen how little things add up, and

that other people's perspectives matter. It's very important to remember that distractions

can be dangerous especially to the life of a project. With distractions in a project, it can
easily become side-tracked. This can happen by having too many side conversations or

not pushing deadlines. It is very important to keep a team focused and keep distractions

to a minimum. The importance of little things adding up learns from the combination of

many little factors that ended in a grand disaster. So it is very important to keep an eye

on and manage any delay or problem before it turns into a larger issue. Finally, I

learned that it is always really important to remember other people's perspectives. It is

always important to have empathy and understand the other person's view and

perspective. It resonated with me when the article also mentioned, “Clear

communication will lead to happier clients''. I find this to be very true and can very much

summarize many of the points being made with the fact that with clear communication

everything can run a lot smoother. This can be from making sure we understand

customers, giving clear direction to team members, and to addressing any problems

that arise. In my opinion, the customers or any customers never deserve to be served

negatively. If there was anything that I can explain from the beginning and not let

situations grow out of proportion I will. Going off that point I recently have been making

a plan and communicated more clearly the plan for the day right as I start my day and I

see that the days go more smoothly. I also think it is really important to make sure

everyone is on the same strategy and most importantly to make sure to have proper

communication skills. I think it's important too how you mentioned you must be flexible

enough to be able to change plans and adjust to what the day brings. I think being able

to handle any situation at any phase is an important skill for any leader to master. I’m

not sure why I think I need more confidence in what I’m saying.
 In the workplace, I believe the best innovation to improve a workplace is better

communication for team members. Communication is key when it comes to all

workplace problems and solutions. So I believe innovations in helping team members

stay connected and informed at all times will help any company succeed better. To

begin with, it's important to prioritize work for a project team and they begin by

discussing how it is very important to first let everyone get a big picture view of a

project. This will allow them to see the end goal and give them something to work

towards. As mentioned in the video, sometimes approaching a project can be very

difficult for some team members since they will not know where to begin. So by giving

them a big picture view it can help them be more committed towards the end goal. The

next important thing is to let them see how other teams are dependent on them and how

they must depend on other teams. This will give the team a sense of urgency and

dependency on each other and give them some more responsibility. It shows them that

just as they need to depend on others, others are going to be depending on them.

Finally, they gave some very helpful advice about how it is very important to tackle the

hardest tasks first since this will most likely take a majority of the time, so getting this

done in the beginning can keep you on track to have your project completed in time. All

this communication is important to master so you can know how to manage tasks

getting done daily. It's important to review a project schedule at the beginning of every

day to have an idea of how the project is getting along. It is also very important to try

and huddle every day with your team just to quickly connect with them and give them

some more encouragement. It also goes over how very important it is to go on

walkabouts and make sure that your project is reaching your expectations. It is
important to get away from your desk and go see in person how your project is coming

along. A project manager should be reviewing their timesheets to make sure everything

is getting along on time. Honestly, I see all of these approaches as very useful in project

management and I will probably implement many of them however the most important

tip that I learned was to tackle the hardest tasks first. This makes a lot of sense to me

and it is something that I never really thought about before. However, the video makes a

great point about how putting off a hard task to the end can throw off your entire project

timeline.

There is so much that we learned throughout this class about effectively managing

projects but if I had one principal and practice that I had to say was so important it

would have to be planning out projects. I believe that planning our project to the most

amount of detail, contingency, risk management, realistic budgets, scheduling, and

anything else is the key to successful project management. I think when there is not a

clear and defined plan a project will not start, continue, or finish very successfully. Of

course, many other aspects of project management are important such as when we

learned about identifying influencing factors and what to do about them. We also

learned how to break down the work and how to manage our time more effectively. We

learned everything from how to layout responsibility and hold people accountable to

how to manage and communicate with your team on a daily, weekly, and project basis.

Overall we also learned about how to use best practices and how it is okay to ask for

help from experts in the field when it is necessary. It is all right not to have all the

answers but it is not okay to lead a team blindly.

I think I have overall learned that everything that we do daily is a project and it should

be executed elegantly, calmly, efficiently, and effectively. I have learned so many skills

that I will be using to handle projects such as managing people and projects to proper

communication. I have also learned more about the importance of planning everything

out. Also, I have learned about the many different levels of project management both in

organizations and in other aspects of life such as this class. I learned that all projects

should be tackled and on and planned out to the best of our abilities. I think that a great

plan and honesty will lead a project to success. I have learned that much of what we do

daily can be looked at from the viewpoint of project management and this course has

given me the confidence and skills to handle these projects a lot better. I believe that

the area of project management that I excel in the most is communication with team

members because it is something that I do the most especially being a supervisor at

Starbucks. I feel like I have learned a lot about coaching Baristas and being able to

manage them and hold them accountable. I believe that I have learned how to rally a

team together and coach them to be the best versions of themselves. Areas that I feel

like I have much to learn in are the administrative side of project management. This is

because I don't feel like I have much experience in seeing a whole project out as a

project manager. However, I feel confident that I have the skills to be very successful in

project management. I think if anything, the skill that I need to work on more is

confidence in my abilities. My biggest growth in knowledge and skills over the last seven

weeks is the importance of planning. Not only when it comes to projects but just in life.

Overall the better we can plan for things and events the better that they will be in the
end. And while it is important to live day by day when it comes to projects or life plans or

tasks to get done it is always we have a plan, be honest about the plan, and stick to the

plan.

Overall the simulations have been an experience I am grateful for. They have

shown more about administering a project than I have ever experienced before. The

scenarios altered my approach to project management in the sense that it made me

realize the huge importance it is when it comes to planning our project. Not only does

planning out my project matter to be able to explain what a project is going to

accomplish to your stakeholders. It is also really important to understand how much

your labor will cost and how realistic your goals are for your schedule. These

simulations have opened up my eyes to the importance of planning and what kind of

effects it can have on your project in the long run. The times that I would run into the

simulation without reading everything and understanding the full scope of a project were

the most miserable runs through the simulation. Overall I'm very happy with the

simulation and everything that it has taught me about planning out a project and being

able to administer it to the end. It was really interesting to learn how to manage a team

and see how they would get frustrated with your decision and see what you could do to

fix it. I think they had the privilege of making trade-offs in a simulation like this which you

will not always have in real life. Even though the simulation was pretty realistic there

were trade-offs that you can make such as going over a budget which isn't a cool way to

apply to real-life projects. It was nice to be able to spend the extra money on labor to try

and please your team or Outsource a lot of work to try and keep your costs down by

paying for more labor however this isn't always the case when it comes to real life. Well,
all of this gave us much more experience in project management. It opens your eyes to

how hard it is to be a project manager. The measures I will understand better are

learning to adjust to the high-risk and uncertainty of a project. The scenarios were quite

too hard to manage when it came to labor from the beginning and see how this will

become one of the biggest expenses. I think it was very important to start the project

very successfully so when the changes show up it would be easier to adjust to them. I

think that it's also really helpful to try and start a project I've successfully and try to get

as much done as possible. When you try and get as much done as possible in the

beginning it is easier to deal with mid-project adjustments that can put you behind

schedule. It was very stressful to try and keep the team in good spirits and try to get the

project out on time while trying to keep it somewhat under budget. Each time that I had

run the simulation I was learning what was unnecessary and I tended to throw out all of

the meeting times and prototypes and was still struggling. It was a really big challenge

to try and get this project out on time with a happy team.

I learned a lot about the administrative side of project management and when it

came to the management portion of the simulation was paying very close attention to

the labor of the game. Since I work at Starbucks I know that labor has a huge impact on

the success of a business. I appreciated learning just how much labor can affect a

budget and the overall outcome of a project since I'm not one to be in charge of these

decisions at my current job. I know that it was gonna affect how fast and how good the

project is going to turn out but not only that it was going to affect tremendously the cost

of the project. My strategy was to pay a lot of attention to the labor and making small

changes and noting the effects of these changes. But I did come to notice that you need
to have a well-rounded labor force without being highly skilled otherwise it will cost too

much but they need to be well enough to be productive and you must have enough

labor for the labor force not to be overly stressed. Overall when people are more

stressed proactively goes down. This is most likely because when people are stressed

they do not know how to progress forward this seems to put the projects behind

schedule. The projects behind schedule then impact the quality because then it is being

rushed to be done on time. The overall stress is not a great factor to have any project.

PART 2

● The three most visible levers of project management

○ Scope

● To begin with, a project manager must create a project scope

management plan which details what is and what is not included in

a project. This becomes one of the most critical pieces of a project

since it will be identifying how a project will be changed or altered

and it also defines the project's formal boundaries.

● The scope must clarify how change requests will be

processed if any. The scope also goes over how the project

will be verified and accepted once it is completed. With a

very strong project scope plan and a clear schedule and

verification process it can be easier to make sure the project

is staying on task, on time, and budget.

● I think that when you’re dealing with a situation that is far

from ideal the best thing that you can do, what I have
 learned from these scenarios and simulations, is to try to

plan as much as you can; try to plan for the unexpected and

make sure that you have a lot of contingency plans.

● When planning your projects including this simulation it is crucially

important to plan out and understand the scope of your projects

from the beginning. It is also really important to communicate all

this to all your team. The better you And your team understand the

scope of your project the better you guys will be off. The times I

truly understood everything going on in the project from the

beginning and planned for it or the times that I did much better in

the simulation.

○ Resources

● Like I said in the previous layer of project management when you’re

dealing with a situation that is far from ideal the best thing that you

can do what I have learned from these scenarios and simulation is

that try to plan as much as you can; try to plan for the unexpected

and make sure that you have a lot of contingency plans. All this

applies to the resources to

● make sure you completely understand the budget of your projects

and what you're being asked for. One of the biggest costs that you

will face will be labor. Labor will take a huge chunk of your budget

so you must understand how much money and what kind of Labor

you should be spending your resources on

 ● also really understand what you were being asked to complete so it

matches the kind of Labor that you are asking for

● finally also understand we are going to be getting the physical

resources for your projects if any are needed. I say this to make

sure that you have good relationships with your vendors if you need

any to make sure that your project won't be delayed due to any

miscommunications with vendors.

○ Schedule

● The schedule will greatly affect the success of your project. A

schedule will not only make sure that a project has an outline for

when it gets to be completed but it will also dictate how well your

team will work. The schedule can push your team into working

harder with a quick deadline. However, it can also in the right

conditions stress people out to the point where they are no longer

productive. While it is really important to set a very strict schedule

and push for that schedule to be on time it is also really important to

take care of your team. A stressed-out team will not be as

productive.

● Critical trends or patterns

○ Meetings Aren't always your friend

● Contrary to popular belief, having a bunch of meetings for your

team isn't always going to lead to a successful project. What I have

noticed is that when your team is having too many meetings it takes
 away from the time they have to work on the project. While this is

common sense I thought adding more meetings when the team

was stressed out to try and air out their concerns doesn't always

relieve their stress. I found out that cutting out all meetings when

the team was very stressed out seemed to be more successful than

adding them. While it is important to check in with your team and

make sure that they do not need your help or assistance in

anything it isn't always ideal to just keep adding meetings.

○ Prototypes aren't always necessary

● The team might enjoy creating prototypes to give them something

else to work on; they are not always as important as I once thought.

Sometimes they just add more work and stress to a team than they

need. When it is just business as usual and the scope of a project

is not to continually improve, product prototypes are not necessary.

They're necessary for finding errors in our production or improving

our current Technologies however when that is not the case they

tend to just add more work and stress to a team.

○ Stress levels matter

● While we all know that having stress in a project is never ideal I

never knew how much it could affect productivity. While it is pretty

obvious that it would bring down productivity it made me realize just

how important it is to be taking care of your team. It is really

important to make sure that your team isn't feeling overwhelmed

 and overly stressed because it will just take a dip in your

productivity and the project will no longer be continuing with a

longer schedule. When a project isn't continuing according to your

schedule then the stress will fall on you and it will be even harder to

try and correct these errors. I found that it is harder to fix a team

that overly strengthens and tries to prevent it from the beginning.

So overall it is really important to make sure your team does not

feel overwhelmed and stressed because it will just take a blow to

your productivity and your project's overall success.

○ Plan for the unexpected

● The best thing that you can do from what I have learned from these

scenarios and simulation is that try to plan as much as you can; try

to plan for the unexpected and make sure that you have a lot of

contingency plan greatest project manager should be able to

handle any situation that is thrown at them and make sure that their

team pushes for project completion. I think overall the importance

of planning and handling charges to the plans is the most important

thing that I have learned this semester.

● “Model” of the causal relationships

○ The kinds of changes that change the casual relationships within the

project affected the stress and schedule of our project. If you need to find

replacement workers or vendors it is stressful for everyone. The

unexpected events that require project adjustment are the most stressful.
 All these kinds of mid-project adjustments always added more stress to

the team. Also,n all these changes were putting us behind schedule and

all these adjustments added up to having an overall more stressful project

it was very important to try and minimize the stress and the project so the

trade-offs that I did end up making was going a little bit over the budget to

have extra labor to try and get the project done. I figured with all of the

adjustments and changes made in the project going a little bit over in the

labor costs would be just fine with everything going on.

References

Austin, Robert D. "Project Management Simulation; Scope, Resources, Schedule

V2." Harvard Business School Simulation, July 3, 2020.