Scenario C

Overall Experience with Scenario:

 How many times did you run through this simulation? What did you learn each
time? What were some of the biggest challenges?

I ran through this simulation 5 times. The first 4 times, I was having a ton of
trouble staying on par with the budget and completion time management set.
Through simulation A B and C, I have still not figured out how to stay within
the budget and completion time. I feel like I do extremely well the first 10
weeks then I run out of money and see a ton of stress from the team. The
fifth and final time I took a simulation, I ended up improving my score by 150
points which was extremely surprising. I figured out the reason for this
increase was that I was very focused on increasing the morale and
decreasing the stress of my team. I made sure to analyze how my team was
feeling after every week and I made necessary changes. Unfortunately, I still
went over budget by $20,000 and was two weeks late finishing the project.

 What’s different about the project context in this scenario from the last one?

The simulation before dealt with an unexpected loss and staff and that was
the hardest simulation so far. I think it’s extremely important to have risk
management awareness. In this specific simulation, midway through
management asked me to shorten the project completion time and this
definitely threw me off the first few times I took the simulation, however once
I expected it to happen I planned accordingly and ended up doing a lot better
job.

 What strategies did you use to deal with this scenario? What worked? What
didn’t? Were you able to complete the project successfully?

. With this specific scenario I decided to look more closely at the analytics
between each week. The analytics were able to tell me how the team was holding
up and some tips and tricks to get back on track regarding the budget and
completion time. In this scenario, I used as much emotional intelligence as I
could and I put the teams feelings first. I realized that productivity plummets
when the team is stressed and morale is low. I also made sure to ensure the
 team was happy with the amount of meetings that were given each week. I feel
like I learned a lot in this specific simulation because I realize the importance of
keeping your team happy. I said previously, I still cannot stay within the budget or
complete the project in the assigned time frame. At first, I thought spending a lot
of money on highly skilled members would possibly get us ahead but all that did
was use the budget in a negative way. For me, I need to be more of a detail
oriented project manager. I ended up getting a 650 score on my fifth and final
attempt however I went over budget by $20,000 and did not complete the project
in the necessary time. I would say that this was a failed project because I
neglected to huge success metrics.

 Having dealt now with different project scenarios, would you revise your
project management approach? If so, how?

For me, I need to be more of a detail-oriented project manager and also

continue to increase my understanding of budget and time constraints. If I
can get these two metrics down, I feel like I can be scoring in the 900s to
1000. I need to revise my approach by analyzing the metrics week to week in
a better manner.

Cause and Effect Relationships

 What sort of unexpected events interceded to require mid-project

adjustments? What trade-offs did you have to make and at what cost?

Midway through the project, management alerted me that the project needed
to be completed in a shorter amount of time. This was extremely frustrating
to me because I did not plan to use the budget in a way that would expedite
the time taken to complete the project. Because of this, I went over budget by
thousands of dollars each time I ran the scenario. In order to successfully
complete the project on time, I had to use a great amount of money from the
budget and little outsourcing to ensure communication and accelerated
completion.

Tensions between Top-Down versus Bottom-Up objectives

 A fundamental tension inherent in managing projects arises from how project

objectives are set from the beginning: either from the top down when
executives dictate what a project should accomplish, or from the bottom up
when project team members formulate project objectives based on their
understanding of the amount of work required to achieve target outcomes.
 Tensions arise when the top-down objectives don’t mesh with what the
project team considers realistic. Is this tension present within this scenario?

I feel like the top-down scenario was present in this simulation. It was very
stressful to the team that midway through, management wanted us to cut our
completion time. I feel like management put us in an extremely negative
situation that in my opinion ended up with low morale and productivity. I think
there needs to be an average when speaking of top down versus bottom-up
scenarios.

Managing Risk and Uncertainty

 What measures did you take to better adjust to the high risk and uncertainty
of this scenario?

I feel like the most important measure I took to adjust to high risk and
uncertainty of this scenario was practice. I feel that the more practice and
patience you put into these scenarios, the more comfortable you will be if
things change or turn south. I need to be persistent in patient in the
scenarios!