Week 2
Project Post Mortem
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
The project I would like to reflect on is the e-Learning Jamaica Project where Zed Jamaica, where I worked as a consultant, won the tender for the development of two educational courses. In this project, the organization was subcontracted to create online lessons in math and science for secondary schools throughout the island for grades 10 and 11 in preparation for regional standardized examinations. These standardized exams are quite important to that culture since passing five or more subjects serves as a desirable entry requirement for employment and a mandatory requirement for college admission. The underperformance of students in math and science was of particular concern for the Ministry of Education (Department of Education) and its Minister of government, and so a hefty budget was allocated to address that concern on a national basis. In an effort to address the performance concerns, the government of Jamaica trained teachers in the use of educational technology in instruction and distributed instructional technology tools like document cameras, multimedia projectors, digital telescopes, and more, to all the schools on the island and undertook the task of outsourcing the creation of instructional media intended to provide struggling students with tutorials for these courses. Tenders were accepted to create instructional media for asynchronous learning, and the company I worked for won one of the tenders.
Reasons for the project's success or failure
The processes, project artifacts or activities that contributed to the success of the project were the contracts and agreements, which included the statement of work where the clients, stakeholders, and vendor ( Zed Jamaica) agreed on the outcomes, deliverables, and the clients and vendor's responsibilities. Other artifacts provided were course outlines and prototypes. Other subsequent artifacts of the project were the Scope of Work and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which includes a RASCI specifying the Schedule of tasks and subtasks, their order of completion, their assignees, and budget or resources. While the client was responsible for distributing and providing technical support after acceptance of the final deliverables. In the agreement, our company, Zed Jamaica, was responsible for the production of these interactive media completed by a team that consisted of SMEs, media designers, audio and video editors, graphic designer, voice-over professional, scriptwriters, and educational consultants. The vendor was also responsible for the provision of the production equipment, software, working environment, and the rental of the studio for the voiceover sessions.
Another factor that contributed to the success of the project was having a dedicated project manager as the CEO of Zed Jamaica was also the project manager (PM) and was not a part of the production team, so he was able to dedicate his time to ensuring that the team members stayed on task, on time, and on budget.
Other PM processes that made the process successful were the communication between the project manager and the team and the communication between the vendor and the client or stakeholders. One of the processes that also aided the success of the project was the submission of the course outline, storyboards, and prototypes for the critique and approval of the clients prior to course development. By having stakeholders sign off or approve at each of the five phases of the project, went a long way to reducing ‘rework’ and ensuring that the deliverables were aligned with expectations.
Rework and ‘scope creep’ did occur in the project, where stakeholders would sometimes point out areas for improvements or additions to the storyboard or prototype, and that would result in revision or additions in designs and scripts, repeats in voice-over recordings which would result in extra costs and time which was absorbed by the company’s contingency budget. According to Van Rekom ( n.d., Walden University), stakeholders sometimes try to add more to the scope but PM must either build in the time and money for these contingencies ahead of time or limit the scope by being able to firmly and diplomatically decline their addition to the scope. Another way the PM dealt with ‘scope creep or rework was to set deadlines and limits for stakeholders' suggested rework and revisions so that the team could produce the deliverables at the agreed on time ( Budrovich, n.d. Walden University).
Milestones for the instructional design project included the kick-off meeting, the scope of work, course outline, storyboard, prototype of each course, the developed course, testing and review report, course revisions, and final deliverables.
One thing that could have been done to make the project more successful was to include stakeholders on the project team, which would have reduced rework.
In conclusion, I think the project was successful because there was a dedicated project manager at the helm; he was able to limit the scope and reduce the scope creep using deadlines and the statement of work agreement, and having a contingency budget and time to absorb additional scope creep or rework expenses. One thing, I thought could have made the project more successful was the compensation of the team graphic and media designers should have been based performance-based using tasks rather than hourly as they were not always productive. Other than what was mentioned, I don’t think there was anything else that we could have included or done to make the project more successful. This was the company's first attempt at producing instructional content, and some things just had to be learned from the experience as they were granted another project going forward.
Reference
Greer, M. (2011). The Project Management Minimalist: Just Enough PM to Rock Your Projects! 2nd Edition.
Stolovich, H. (n.d.). Walden University-Walden University, LLC. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Defining the scope of an ID project [Video file]. Retrieved from https://waldenu.instructure.com
Van-Rekom, Budrovich & Achong. (n.d) . Walden University, LLC. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Practitioner voices: Overcoming ‘scope creep’ [Video file]. Retrieved from https://waldenu.instructure.com
Hi Carol,
ReplyDeleteI have never been exposed to such projects; however, based on your post, I have discovered many factors that should be considered to ensure the project is successful. From your milestones mentioned, one must understand the timeframe needed to complete each task and evaluate the outcome. Since it was the company's first attempt at producing instructional content, the information gathered from the project post-mortem will be useful. Based on the experience, each person should understand what is required, and the PM would execute the management of tasks differently, given that the graphic and media designers were not always productive. Nevertheless, I am glad there was a dedicated project manager to communicate with the team members and ensure the budget was maintained along with meeting the deadline.
Joelle Gill-Wilkinson
Hi Carol,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your experience. A stakeholder is defined as individuals and organizations that are directly or indirectly affected by the project (Greer, 2010). I noted that you stated that the stakeholders were not represented on the project team, which resulted in more rework than you would have preferred. As the stakeholders were responsible for signing off on deliverables at each stage, how do you see their role changing as specific members of the team? How do you define the members of the project team and were you referring to a specific group of stakeholders in your comment?
Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects!. (Walden University, LLC. custom ed.). Baltimore: Walden University, LLC. Education. Inc.