Learning Project Management

Why do I want to learn Project Management?

There is no way I can escape projects in my life (even making dinner is a project of sorts) so I might just as well learn how to do projects well. The upside of this is that I will get better results in all areas of my life (yes, even cooking). I will be able to address things quicker, smarter, with less procrastination, and I will be able to get things done on time with better results (can't beat that). My ability to practice project management well will give me less stress, more fun, and more confidence.

Knowledge Construction

Here are the main ideas of project management:

1. Start with a need or desire for something (to have or to be done)
2. Create diamond to decide on goal for project (10 minutes)
   • Note: Goals have to be 3 things
   1. 1. Extremely motivating
      2. Challenging but attainable
      3. Well-defined; measurable
3. Using a diamond, quickly "decompose" project into Tasks (just enough Tasks to get started). (10 minutes)
   • Note: Each Task must
   1. 1. Have a goal
      2. Take 15-60 minutes to accomplish
4. Each Task has an Owner, and the load is balanced among members.
5. Complete Tasks
6. Meet regularly to
   1. Keep accountable on Tasks
   2. Solve problems
   3. Revise Tasks list (Iterate)
   4. Do SII's (Strength, Improvement, Insight)

At the end, Project Goals are hit, lessons have been learned, and documentation has been recorded.

Application

With this Knowledge Construction on how to tackle projects, I have been trying to apply project management in my every-day-life. I will illustrate my application of project management with an example from the school/professional area of my life (if have time I hope to post an additional example from the more personal area of my life).

Mechanical Engineering Project:

Applying project management in my current Mechanical Engineering project has been fairly straightforward, though difficult and in need of improvement. Our team has worked to have frequent meetings to keep each member accountable, we have used diamonds to define our goals, tasks, and to help with problem solving, and we have been careful to make sure that each task has an owner(s) and that the load is fairly balanced between members. Understandably, we have had to do a lot of iteration, even to the extent of changing our initial product idea. 

Strengths

Throughout this project, our team is done some things well:

• We meet frequently for short meetings.
  • We try to meet as often as once a day during the school week. This allowed us to keep close tabs on where we were and keep each member accountable.
• We assign owners for every task.
  • Every team member was great in volunteering for different tasks (I think it is a good indicator that the tasks are broken down well when no one is too scared to take them on). Giving each task an owner is extremely beneficial in that it creates fantastic accountability and the tasks seem to get done faster.
• We have made sure load is balanced among members.
• Thankfully for this project, balancing tour team has done a great job of balancing the task among the members (this is aided, I think, by the fact that with all of the tasks to be done written down and assigned owners, it is a breeze to assess how the work load is balanced). This lessens slacking, improves learning, and helps everyone have more fun.

Improvements

We have lots of areas we can improve in:

• Use more diamonds
  • We need to use diamonds as often as possible (we can only get better with practice). Diamonds are useful whenever ideas need generating, whether that's brainstorming the tasks to be done or figuring out what a good customer segment is, so we need to use them whenever we need ideas in a meeting. In the long run, this will give us more ingenuity, faster idea acquisition, and better ideas.
• Do more SII's as a team
• Doing SII's as a team will helps us grow immensely. We will be able to grow closer as a team, be more efficient, understand our strengths and weaknesses better, and have more fun. To do this we need to specifically set aside time during a project meeting to do an SII; at least one SII per project should be done (three or four would be better).

Here are a couple of pictures of my logbook.  They are notes of our meetings, and it might be worth noting the iteration that took place.  We started with a certain goal and product in mind, and after several meetings and discussions (and iterations), we had a different product and tasks.  Our project changed a lot.  

This picture is of my logbook right after deciding to switch from our first product (inventory counter) to our second product (power meter for bicycles).

(Part of my learning project management is taking extremely useful notes and documenting better.  As you can see, right now it is far from stellar.)

Lessons Learned
         The three most important things I have learned about project management deal with the importance of diamonds, tasks, and having regular meetings. 
         Diamonds are crucial in project management as an efficient way to get good ideas (i.e. for problem solving, task generating, etc).  Our tendency is to pick the first idea that pops into our heads; however, if we use diamonds to generate as many ideas an we possibly can, we get better ones in the end, making diamonds an important part of project management.
         I also learned about the necessity of breaking a project into well-defined tasks and giving each of those tasks an owner.  When we tried this out in our project meetings, the results were glorious.  Everyone knew exactly what they were doing and when they had to have their task done, so things got done quicker; and, for some reason, people helped each other out more, too.
         Lastly, having regular meetings helped our project management immensely.  It allowed us to have shorter meetings while still going over the necessary "stuff".  Additionally, it helped us get to know our team members better (an immeasurable bonus when you are trying to work together as a team).

       
        The three most important things I learned about the Learning Cycle is that: 1) not everyone learns the same way, 2) application is super important, 3) iteration is super important.

• Not everyone learns the same way
• As the Kolb learning cycle shows, everyone learns things a little bit differently, which is exciting to me because it helps me understand my team members better (as well as others in general). 
• Application is super important
• This is especially important to me because I know that unless I actually apply something, I am useless at remembering it for the future.
• Iteration is super important
• Although I very much dislike this part of the learning cycle, I understand its importance, since it is better to do something a number of times quickly, than to try to get it right the first time (much more stress).  This is definitely something that will take me a while to get.