Alejandra Enriquez

OGL 321

Professor Rob

February 3, 2021

Module 4 Paper

When you are working in a team, it is important as a team manager to find ways to

accomplish the goals of the project. In chapter 3 of “Managing Project Uncertainty” by David

Cleden, it explains four possible modes for confronting uncertainty. The four steps are suppress,

adapt, detour, and reorient.Sometimes it will be hard to adapt to situations, especially those you

have not come across before. As a project manager it is important to use solutions- finding

techniques to use when we come across problems and situations. In the chapter I learned that we

need to understand how we got to the uncertainty. We need to ask ourselves if there is something

in common every single time we are in this specific problem or is there a specific step in what

we are doing that causes problems in the future. When finding solutions, it is important to work

best as a team to speak about possible outcomes. In chapter four by David, it talks about

mapping what we know and what we don't. Creating the mapping allows us to learn and help

prepare for the uncertainty. We need to lay out all the information and become aware of all the

unknown. Decision makers are normally chosen based on authority. When making decisions we

need to remember the times we were in the exact situation to understand the personal behavior

patterns.
 In the article “ What is a Contingency Plan” by the Upwork Staff talks about approaches

to project development to give the ability to adjust. In that article it explains how regardless if

you suppress for the worst of the worst scenarios, there are times where things are out of your

control. The things that are out of your control will lead to the project going off track. It is

important as a project manager to understand how important it is to have contingency plans to

help your team move forward even when dealing with the worst case scenarios. Assessing

possible risks is what is needed as step one in creating a contingency plan.

In the simulation I can honestly say that I sort of tried to reorient. I tried to make the best

of it every single time I ran the simulation. It was hard for me to find a way to achieve the goal

of the project, especially after losing five weeks of when the printer needed to be made. After

running the simulations numerous times, I tried to adapt to the situation and tried to make

different decisions to remain focused on the objectives of the scenario, but I seemed to fail

regardless of what decision I would make. In the simulation, I personally kept finding that when

we hit five weeks and lost time in regards to when we needed to achieve the goal of the project is

what causes there to be stress and causes our team to be unsuccessful each time. In the

simulation, I am the authority to who was in charge of all the decisions that were being made

each week to accomplish the project goal. As the manager of the scenario, it is important to

decide how many team members there were and how much resources we were using. Even

though I ran the simulations over and over again made me use personal behavior patterns to

identify tried and tested approaches, but I found myself running the exact same decisions even

after trying other choices.

 At work, I can honestly say that in order for us to deal with uncertainty we mostly have to

adapt to the situation and still remain focused on obtaining the objectives of ringing up a

customer to hand out their food or drinks in a timely manner. There will be times where we will

suppress and take steps to reduce levels of uncertainty before problems happen by making sure

we have enough workers on the floor and finding coverage when needed. To avoid uncertainty,

as a manager or whichever position you are at Starbucks, we are responsible for trying to get our

shift covered so that there won't be any problems. At work when we are trying to resolve the

uncertainty we normally just have to adapt to the situation and figure out a way to work as a

team to pull it out in the end when we are short staffed or there is just a big rush. When taking a

minute to think about what causes the problems at work, the same pattern leads to being short

staffed. The biggest problem we tend to have is that we are short staffed which will cause us to

be swamped and super busy. There are also times when people are not put in the position that

they accelerate in. For example, during peak hours the supervisor in charge needs to put the

fastest person on the bar, but oftentimes they put individuals who are either newer or just slower

on the bar and there are times where they put individuals to double who struggle with that. In

work it does not matter who has authority to make decisions. There are a lot of times that as a

barista we make decisions, especially when our supervisor or anyone with a higher title is on

their lunch. At Starbucks we use the term ''plays”, which is they layout of who is positioned

where, especially during peak hours. At work, we use the tried and tested approaches to be able

to find ways how to improve as a team to improve how long it takes us to get the customers out

of our stores still in a happy mood.