Kiana Knox

OGL 320

Professor Corlett

7, December 2021

Final Reflective Paper

After everything I have learned and done from this past semester there are

multiple factors that go into the practices and procedures of effectively managing

projects. To even manage a project you have to start with a project to manage that is

either tangible or intangible and it can do with a product, service etc. Of course what

also comes with a project to manage is a team to manage as well but you all at the end

of the day have the same goal and mission that you are trying to accomplish. To me

there are ten top things that managers do to help run and control a project. Those are

creating a WBS (work breakdown structure) and CCB (change control board), having a

gantt chart, a triple constraint, change management, risk mitigation and a project life

cycle, knowing your milestones, baselines, and stakeholders. With all of these

mainterms there are more procedures that branch off of them that need to be done to

help make things more efficient and organized but these to me are the main procedures

that need to be done to help manage a project. A few more procedures that I think are

important to help keep everything smooth throughout the project is to create a project

charter which basically has all the terms I mentioned earlier in it but it brings it all

together in an organized way and so you can see everything together. Creating a

networking diagram will help you lay out all the possible dependencies and schedule

development so you can make sure everything is in order. Lastly, no matter what
happens throughout the project good or bad, you have to make sure you do the seven

steps of closing a project because not only does not it wrap up the project but helps

you bring together everything that happened so you can have documentation of

mistakes, successes and everything in between just in case you need that later for other

projects or even the clients.

Now looking at more of the practice side of things, to me the practices that

are important to conduct revolve more with what is happening within the organization

and/or the team. The first step to have anything be successful is to have a well

established team that is close because that will make things easier no matter what and

it begins with the culture you develop in your organization. Establishing what kind of

culture you want throughout the workplace from the jump to the people coming into it

will help weave out the people who are on board and the people who are not and the

more people you have on board, the better everyone will be able to get along and have

a smooth operating team. Also the structure of your team will impact the outcome of the

project to build the structure that will help you as a whole succeed and continue to

practice all of these different factors everyday so no outside influence seeps in and

interrupts what you have been building. Now also practicing the high performance tips

for managing a team creating a team charter will help keep everything in order and

everyone in check just like when you create a charter for the project. This also starts

with you though and teb type of leadership style you perform so practices good

leadership skills and staying consistent to that will help your team know who you are

and will help create those better relationships. Lastly, the last thing that I strongly

believe will be the factor to make or break anything in life is communication.

Communication is such an important skill to have and with no communication, things

can't get done or fixed at the end of the day. Working on good communication

throughout your organization will help make you more successful because if things go

south you gotta know so you can fix it or on the opposite side if things are going really

good you need to know that for just yourself and the project completion or if you need to

report back to someone. At the end of the day I can't stress enough the importance of

communication and how that is probably if bkt ten most important thing that needs to be

practiced in the organization.

I can without a doubt say I have personally grown not only my knowledge

but as a person and how to manage a project. I started out the semester honestly new

to all of these concepts and the idea of project management, as well as, all the factors

that come along with it but I can for sure say I have learned a lot and have a better

understanding of it. Now I can also say that I still have a lot to learn and room to grow

especially in my skills, plus could use more practice on the tools that come along with

managing a project. So at the beginning of the semester as well I took the self

assessment quiz and scored a 66 which I was actually surprised about because I didn't

believe I would score that well. I decided to take it again to see if I grew at all in my skills

and I scored a 79 tsi time so it was great to be reassured that I have grown my skills but

of course like I said I still have room for improvement. I looked at the conclusion of it to

see where I am strong and where I need improvement and anything else it shares with

me. The factors I am strong in are project integration (scored 9/10), scope management

(scored 10/10), cost management (scored 10/10), and people management (scored

10/10). The areas that weren't bad but not my best were quality management (scored
11/15), communication (scored 8/10), and project procurement (scored 8/10). Lastly, the

skills that I need the most improvement on are schedule management (scored 12/20),

and risk management (scored 6/10). Knowing this information I can now focus more on

the areas that are the weakest or not as strong so I can become an overall better

project manager but I am happy to see that I scored a 10/10 on the general project

management skills.

Reflecting on my results and just everything I have learned throughout this

semester I can really agree with the areas that I need to improve especially with the rist

management portion because even when we were working on tha in class, for some

reason it was something I struggled with understanding and like how to develop the risk

factors with the different tools to use like conducting the risk statements for example. I

was surprised with my scores on schedule and communication because I honestly

thought those would be some of my highest scores but now knowing that I see that

maybe I should stop not focusing on those areas so much because I think I am good at

it and put some more attention on them. I also was surprised with my outcome on scope

management and quality management because I personally felt like I never did the

scope aspects correctly or fully understood them, as well as, I thought i would have

scored better in the quality area because I know the importance of it but like said before

I just need to focus a little bit more in area to know exactly what needs to be done to get

that quality executed. I feel like personally for me there was not just one area I grew the

most in or more than others and I grew tremendously in all areas because like I said

before I came in not really knowing anything about project management, let alone all the

tools and components that need to be complete to help manage a project but I know
sos much now, so I personally feel I grew overall in every area and knowledge of this

rather than just one area.

Overall, I am very happy about how much I have been able to learn and

grow over the course of the past seven weeks and I feel so much more confident in my

abilities to manage a project. I am also excited to continue to grow my new skills and

practice in the future with all of these components to help me become the best project

manager I can be. I am so thankful for all the knowledge I was able to gain from this

course and excited to see where I go from here to continue to grow into the most

successful me I can be.