I work for a contract company which supplies workers for industrial maintenance and repairs. Almost every task within our organization is project-based.<\/p>\n
For large contracts requiring hundreds of workers, a certified Project Manager (PM) is recruited. The PM oversees regular meetings, monitoring\/control of costs and time, Gantt Charts, critical path mapping, and wraps up with a key-stakeholder debriefing and brainstorming session for future improvements. Smaller jobs are planned, organized and managed by the core-few of owner-bosses and regular employees.<\/p>\n
Unit 3 – Activity 1 asks us to reflect on the implementation of a new project within our organization:<\/p>\n
What was the problem\/issue to be solved?<\/em><\/strong> There are many challenges with training and completing hire-on packages\/contracts for the hundreds of workers we need to hire for a large project. Most of the trades-workers are not local. Paying workers to travel to attend safety training well-ahead of time is challenging to schedule and very costly, and waiting until the day before a job begins is risky – we could get caught with our pants down if workers fail their safety training quizzes or don\u2019t show up and we cannot find last-minute replacements. In addition, because we require all the sign-on documents and training to be completed before anyone is legally allowed to begin work, it is an administrative nightmare to process all the legislatively-required paperwork for hundreds of people in a single day before the job starts. The solution presented was to provide safety training online several weeks ahead of time.<\/p>\n Were the overall goals communicated?<\/strong><\/em> Yes, in a broad, not detailed, way.<\/p>\n Who benefited?<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Our organization benefited – most specifically administration.<\/p>\n Who were the stakeholders?<\/strong><\/em> The organization, the customer, and the workers\/learners.<\/p>\n Was there a project plan put in place?<\/strong><\/em> There was an overall project plan with a project manager for the entire massive industrial maintenance project, but not a specific or detailed plan which focused on the digital learning aspect.<\/p>\n What did the plan look like?<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0“We need online training ASAP.”<\/p>\n What changes in planning do you think would have helped with any of the barriers or challenges that were encountered?<\/strong><\/em> I think the creation of the online safety program could have started earlier so it wouldn\u2019t have been such a mad rush to implement it and troubleshoot. I think we should have had more consideration for the experience of the end user – the workers. With more time, we might have researched online training-delivery methods and found a more user-friendly platform for technology-challenged workers.<\/p>\n Do you think any specific method for<\/strong><\/em> planning was used?<\/strong><\/em> No, unless you count “ready, set, go!\u201d as a planning method. We still unofficially managed costs and time and met the generalized criteria for successful completion, i.e. the goal to simply put the training online. This was feasible because our problem was a relatively tame\/simple problem (Conway, Masters, & Thorold, 2017).<\/p>\n What methods do you see yourself using in your practice?<\/strong><\/em> Instead of jumping straight to the execution phase, I would like to explore a more in-depth planning phase for future endeavors. I also think the \u201csequential sprints\u201d described in scrum methodology (Watt, 2014, p. 36) could fit well within our organization’s culture. Conway et al.\u2019s \u201cthink like a system, act like an entrepreneur\u201d (2017, p. 3) method has reconfigured some of my thoughts on approach as well.<\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Conway, R., Masters, J., & Thorold, J., (2017). From design thinking to systems change: How to invest in innovation for social impact<\/a>. Royal Society of Arts, Action and Research Centre.<\/p>\n Watt, A. (2014). Project Management<\/i><\/a>. Victoria, BC: BCcampus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I work for a contract company which supplies workers for industrial maintenance and repairs. Almost every task within our organization is project-based. For large contracts requiring hundreds of workers, a certified Project Manager (PM) is recruited. The PM oversees regular meetings, monitoring\/control of costs and time, Gantt Charts, critical path mapping, and wraps up with … Continue reading LRNT 525 – Unit 3: Activity 1 – Planning and the Management of Projects<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt525","category-uncategorized","tag-lrnt-525"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0003\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0003\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0003\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0003\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0003\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0003\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0003\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0003\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0003\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0003\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}