Module 7: Final Paper 1

Conquering the Mountain

Roseanna Bretoi

Arizona State University

Ben Pandya

PMG 321 Fall B

November 30, 2022

Module 7: Final Paper 2

Conquering the Mountain

Part I

Wow, we have made it to the end of the session. It is not fathomable to me that it’s over.

However, I am proud of the progress I have made this session. I started the session at the base

of a mountain thinking that this class would be overwhelming and my intuition wasn’t wrong.

As a highly competitive person, I enjoyed the thrill of challenging myself to do better each week.

I spent copious amounts of time each week tinkering with the Harvard Simulation scenario of the

week, trying to figure out what I was missing – completing each scenario double-digit amounts

of time before being ok with my score.

Each scenario was a hike up a mountain. If I made the wrong move I wound up off the

path and things went south quickly. There were times I was thinking I was on the right path and

suddenly a summer storm rolls in (such as a staffing crisis where I lost 3 team members and

couldn’t rehire for 2 weeks) washing out the trail lines beyond recognition. The project must go

on though and once I started up the mountain I had to adjust from there, when climbing a

mountain if you get to a place in the hike that isn’t going to take you to the top you don’t rush

back down and start from a different spot. Instead, you shift and pivot, making changes that are

sensical not on a whim. Every week I came to the project with a blank slate prepared to be

outsmarted by some obstacle(s) being hurled at me. It was my goal to remain structured yet

flexible enough to adjust when necessary. The easy part was sitting down at my table and

reading through the Project Brief and Scenario Objectives as I made my selections in an attempt

to be successful in the climb. At times I was successful, but there were many times I failed

horribly. However, I didn’t concede. I didn’t throw my hands up and say this is impossible,

instead, I tried, made an effort, and pushed to the limit towards success. I examined my
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decisions, changed my course, and sought out stillness in an attempt to get a better understanding

of what was happening and why.

In the first couple of scenarios, I was looking for a quick fix, throwing spaghetti against

the wall to see what would stick. Then in week 3, Scenario B I changed my project management

approach after I had already submitted my scores. When I began my Module 3 paper I

discovered I was taking my team on a rollercoaster ride each week. The goal was getting to the

top of the mountain, and it was not possible or probable to make adjustments when I got there, I

needed to make adjustments to get there. Many paths lead up the mountain, but not all of them

are the right path. I was convinced that this mountain of a class was conquerable and as I stand

at the peak today I can proudly say I was right.

Quizmaster-ish

Although I never took the quiz “How Good Are Your Project Management Skills?”

before today I wish I had so that I could have a baseline score before I started this class. The

quiz was fun to take and I scored 88:

You are an accomplished project manager. Few things that happen will upset you, or

hurt your confidence in your ability to lead the project to a successful end. Use your

mastery to help others on your team develop their project management skills. Lead by

example, and provide opportunities for other team members to manage parts of the

project. Also, be aware of your strengths and weaknesses.

88 is not a perfect score, but on a scale of 1-100 it’s a good score and I am comfortable with it.

Many of the questions in the quiz were not common sense before this class. For example, it

seems as though a prompt like “Delivering on time and budget are the most important things for
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me” would justify very often, but there is the issue of quality management that needs to be kept

at the forefront of a project too. Delivering a widget that doesn’t work on time and is under

budget is not successful project management. Or, a prompt that reads “Because projects involve

so many variables that change so often, I let the plan develop on its own, as time passes, for

maximum flexibility” would justify very often, after-all a project manager should be flexible.

But, a good project manager doesn’t let a plan develop on its own. A good project manager

makes an organized plan based on the scope, schedule and budget then adjusts the plan as needed

to account for scope creep, overcome challenges, and overall completion of the project

successfully.

In the early weeks of the class, my priority was the human aspect of the project. I was

concerned about team morale, I have always considered myself a leader who cares for the needs

of her people. The scenarios showed me that caring for my people doesn’t always mean jumping

or making huge adjustments just because a team is feeling an average amount of stress. The

problem needs to be contextualized, is this a root problem or a reoccurring problem due to a root

problem? If it’s not a root cause of the issues then putting a band-aide on it isn’t going to

prevent it from popping back up. As a PM, I had to focus on the big picture - find the root cause

and adjust that issue to aid the stress the team feels. In his blog, The Tao of Project Management

John Carroll says, “Poor project managers tend to jump every time someone yells. Wise project

managers calmly point out that to jump would impact on other activities and asks the jumpee to

consider which other project activities they would like to be put aside to allow the jumper time to

plan and execute the jump on their behalf.” One of the tradeoffs I frequently made in the

scenarios was to sacrifice my budget to keep my team morale up. This trade-off is not always

equivocal. It took me nearly all session to square that though. In the early scenarios, I was
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constantly way over budget, it wasn’t until the final two weeks that I understood how to manage

my budget effectively and maintain a decent morale for my team. In fact, in Scenario F I came

in UNDER BUDGET, which hadn’t happened all session. It felt like an appropriate end to the

class that I was able to conquer my biggest struggle in the scenarios.

Epistemic Risks

I believe that my biggest growth area in this class was risk management. I am not sure I fully

understood what risk management was before this class. I knew that there was a difference

between putting out fires and preventing fires but I wasn’t exactly sure how to do the latter. I

believe that some of the skills necessary to mitigate risk come from instinct but many risk

management skills come with time. Risk management skills can be developed and honed over

time, I am working on them constantly – I have seen my scores improve week after week, so I

know that knowledge is key. I have learned through this class to be calm when making decisions

and adjustments. Assessment before any reaction is more valuable in project management than

shooting from the hip. My biggest concern as this class comes to an end is that I struggle with

thinking outside the box, I do not consider myself a visionary. I constantly need to remind

myself there is more out there, expanding my focus to look at things from a different perspective.

Throughout the session, I made adjustments in the scenarios based on the obstacles using my

knowledge about the threat that was presented to me, but was I only successful because the

projects were narrow and controlled and the uncertainty was only uncertain on the first attempt

of the scenario?

In his blog Musings On Project Management John Goodpasture says, “Coincidence,

correlation, and causation: Few understand one from the other; and for that very reason, many
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can be led by the few to the wrong fork in the road.” There will always be unpredictable

variables, variables that must be handled before the spark turns into a fire that is raging out of

control. At any given time in a project something will come up, something that hasn’t been

planned for or thought about – this is a chance to learn something new. There is no exact science

to project managing, no tried and true formula that will allow you to foresee the unseeable every

single time. I have learned that the best way to handle uncertainty is to acknowledge that it’s

going to happen before it does which has allowed me to consider options to manage or minimize

the risks before catastrophe strikes.

Prophetic

In his blog, The Tao of Project Management John Carroll states, “ Trying to score points

will not shed light on what is happening on the project. Wanting to be right will blind people to

the real work of the project.” This quote sums up my learning in this class, I have always

considered myself to be a bottom-line leader - I look at the goals and say bring it on. I coach

train and develop my team to take on the challenges that we have before us. I motivate them

when times get rough and jump in to help if necessary. There have been several failures in my

professional career, times when I failed to look beyond the numbers to the minutia, I was blind to

the effect my decisions had on my team and didn’t consider consequences as much as I

concerned myself with being the best. In my future professional life, my takeaway from this

class will be that the details are important. If something isn’t working, there should be thought

and investigation put into it to determine what needs to be done to re-establish a balance. It’s

become apparent that by not doing this in the past I was doing more harm than good. I look back
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now and wonder how much better my outcomes could have been if I put more emphasis on the

real work of the project instead of trying to go full steam ahead throwing caution to the wind.

In the future, I would like to be a successful project manager for an NGO. To be

successful I will need to be fully cognizant of the real work that is being done on the project.

Including implementation, communication, resources, and budget as per the agreed terms with

the donors. A project manager can play an important role in an NGOs success. NGOs are often

on strict budgets due to funding coming from donors, which means the budget will be less than I

would love to have- efficiency will be key. The role of a project manager in an NGO is to make

SMART goals account for risk management, meet with board members and volunteers, closely

monitor goals and ultimately create a clear process with achievable deadlines to enable everyone

on the team to work within reasonable bounds. After what I have learned in this class I do

believe I have a good foundation to be competitive in this role.

Part II

As an experienced scholar who has completed the Harvard Project Management Simulation I

have some parting words of advice for the novice who will be undertaking this feat next, as you

read my words of wisdom keep in mind what John Carroll writes in his blog:

Much has been written about what a project manager needs to do but very little on the way

he should do it. We have all probably met 'hard' project managers, who drive their teams

and themselves, but it is maybe more difficult to recall the 'soft' project managers, the ones

who achieve quietly and seemingly with little effort. The wise project manager brings out his

feminine side (unless of course she already happens to be one of the 20% of project
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managers who is a woman, in which case be thankful and be yourself), for this is the way of

the project manager.

Maneuvers

Managing scope, resources, and schedule is not an easy job. The first thing to understand

is you should not get too hung up on the morale of your team. It is normal for anyone working

on a project with a tight budget and timeline to feel pressure and some amount of stress. The

team will never be 100% satisfied, just as in real life workers are rarely fully content with their

job. When you get a notification that your team is stressed about the deadline, or that they are

confused instead of immediately changing everything in your project take a look at the entire

picture with a keen eye. If necessary make a small adjustment, maybe add in coaching or a

meeting depending on the issue that they are complaining about, their skill level, and the amount

of outsourcing you are using.

Resist the urge to start adding people if they are complaining that they are stressed about

the deadline, while this seems like a good idea it can hold you back. Adding new teammates can

lead to delays due to the ramp-up time required to get them meshing with the team and project,

also it may require more meetings which will affect your schedule and possibly your budget. A

better solution would be to add outsourcing to assist with finishing the project on schedule.

Speaking of budget, it will likely feel too low and you may blow it. Don’t beat yourself

up, based on the discussion board my peers and I all felt the same tensions about the budget. It

was challenging not to go over the budget most weeks. I found that using a smaller team is

easier on the budget and schedule. A large team will require more meetings to keep everyone on

the same page, which takes away time from the schedule and will cost more money week after
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week. It sounds like a foolproof plan to hire a team of 10 experts and have them knock it out of

the park in a couple of weeks under budget and ahead of schedule. This logic is fallible though –

if only it was that easy! I found that the best plan of action was to stay as close to the allocated

budget as possible each week without going over, similar to the price is right – once you go over

you are going to continue to go over, and there is no stopping it then.

What’s Trending?

The scenarios all varied, they each had a learning objective tied to them and unexpected risks

that needed to be mitigated with varying degrees of difficulty.

Scenarios:

A. From what I can tell this was a baseline scenario, to get the user comfortable with the

format and a basic idea of if this then that.

B. This project was incredibly challenging, there is a staffing crisis in the middle of the

project causing the majority of the team to leave. To rub salt in the wound you are

unable to re-hire anyone for two weeks causing a severe slowdown in production.

C. In the middle of this project, the stakeholders require the product to be released three

weeks earlier than originally planned.

D. This scenario was challenging due to top-down objectives did not mesh with reality,

and the schedule and the budget were both very small. As a project manager, there

will need to be a trade-off of budget or schedule. I found that getting my project done

early with a moderate amount of budget overage gave me my best score.

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E. This scenario was very similar to D having a short schedule and shoestring budget.

However, I found the opposite tradeoff to be true in this scenario – the closer I was to

the budget the better I scored.

F. This scenario had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at the PM. Everything from

a car accident to components not being available was causing delay after delay. The

best solution to this scenario was to make prototypes, they helped to mitigate the

issues the more prototypes I made the fewer issue pop-ups I experienced.

Cause and Effect

There are many casual relationships within the projects, and the best piece of advice I can give is

to make fewer changes rather than overhaul the entire project mid-project. If you need an oil

change you don’t immediately yank out the engine – Ockham’s razor if you will. Consistency

goes a long way on a project and each of these scenarios is best tackled with that in mind. Be

mindful that there are costs associated with making too many or too frequent changes such as

upsetting the balance on the team which can cost you in schedule and budget.

 Use Outsourcing and Overtime strategically, they are there to help you with meeting your

schedule and budget. Be mindful that the more outsourcing used the more coordination

through meetings the team will require and the more problems can arise due to a lack of

effective communication. Too much overtime can lead to team burnout which will have

an impact on the quality of the production – in turn affecting the schedule.

 I found that the stakeholders are happy (and I was awarded more points) when I

completed a higher-level printer, I highly recommend going this route – in the later
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scenarios they are going to require the higher-level product from the start, so it is a good

idea to get used to what you will need to be successful in achieving the level 4 product.

 I also highly recommend using prototypes, they are going to assist in preventing scope

creep and managing uncertainty. If your team is finding mistakes the best solution to

avoid your schedule being impacted is fire prevention by using prototypes.

 Your team is going to need more leadership at the beginning of the project, you can taper

off the coaching as they get into the groove and build a knowledge base about the project.

This is extremely helpful for keeping your schedule.

 I found that using a team with mid-level competency was easier on the budget and they

don’t require as much 1:1 as a team with basic skills. Basic skills will save the budget

but they will cost you on schedule.

 Morale is impacted adversely by too many meetings, an unrealistic schedule, and too

much outsourcing without communication.

Summation

Project Management is a skill that involves planning, assessing, re-planning, and

reassessing continuously. A project manager will coordinate, apply knowledge, use tools,

identify risks, and achieve project goals within the constraints given to them. PMG 321: Project

Leadership has given me and my peers a view behind the curtain of what goes on in managing a

project from start to finish. There was more than one curveball present nearly every week. The

class used the Harvard Project Management Simulation to provide a hands-on approach to scope,

resources, schedule, team morale, and how to plan effectively. There are many outcomes

available, many decisions to make, and tradeoffs have to be made. Participating in the

simulation was extremely helpful to understand how efficiency plays a big role in project
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management. To finalize my thoughts, this class has shown me what kind of leader I am in a

project, what tradeoffs I am willing to make, and what I need to work on to be a better project

manager. I am constantly growing and being aware of what I need to work on is the first step

toward becoming great. I am excited to take forth the knowledge I have gained in this class to

my future projects.
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References

Carroll, J. (1970, January 1). The Tao of Project Management. Retrieved November 30,

2022, from http://thetaoofpm.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2020-06-

02T09%3A03%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=20&start=6&by-date=false

Goodpasture, J. (2022, June 13). John Goodpasture - managing principal - square peg

consulting, LLC. Musings On Project Management . Retrieved November 30, 2022, from

http://www.johngoodpasture.com

Mind Tools, C. T. (n.d.). Home. MindTools. Retrieved November 30, 2022, from

https://www.mindtools.com/a29u54f/how-good-are-your-project-management-skills