Last year I was involved in a project that involved converting five face-to-face courses into fully online ones. I was not managing the project myself, however, instead, I was involved in the project in the way of creating the master course shells in Desire to learn (D2L), which is an online platform for implementing online classes. I was also in charge of supporting the instructors to start their courses on the new platform and start teaching by the project deadline, I was also available to them for support throughout their first term. The stakeholders for this project were the instructors and students that were enrolled in the five online classes.
There was a limited budget assigned to this project which did not provide the instructors with enough hours for the training of online teaching or for learning how to use D2L before launching the courses, so even though they did start the courses, they were not fully prepared. The scope of the project was not large and was manageable with the persons assigned, however, there was not a project plan in place that was communicated to all team members involved. The project was successful and the courses did start by the deadline, however, the quality of the designed courses could have been better with more time and budget in place. The first set of students enrolled in the courses faced challenges due to rush designed for the courses such as not being provided with enough directions and feedback.
If I was managing this project, I would have done research prior to the start of the project and would have asked for the feedback from our experienced staff to implement the best practices. Based on the information I would have gathered, I would have designed a plan to complete the project with regular meetings in place all the way throughout to ensure that we would have open communication.
March 10, 2018 at 8:01 pm
Hello May,
Your blog post brought to mind a project management model called the Triple Constraint (cost, time, and scope ensure quality) that has more recently evolved into what some call a Project Diamond (cost, time, scope, and quality revolve around customer expectations). Restraints in any of these areas affect results. Using this tool when planning a project can help to ensure each key area is fully addressed. Here is a good explanation of these models https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/understanding-the-project-management-triple-constraint.php
March 18, 2018 at 4:40 pm
Hi May,
This brings to mind a few examples that I have seen of assuming that it’s just a transfer of knowledge from one platform to another, and not thinking about the end -users of the platform. You have some great points in your last paragraph of how you would enroll your stakeholders by consulting them and involving them in the early steps, so that they are aware of the upcoming process changes. Great real-world example.