Project Planning

Team Meeting: 1.5 hours
Writing sections of the Project Plan: 4 hours

This week, the work load was lighter than last week. On Friday, we met as a team to discuss upcoming activities in the project. Again, we went over the team’s website look. No final decisions were taken regarding this issue and, most probably this is where it is going to be left at. We also discussed the option of moving forward with the learners’ analysis since our client extended an open invitation for us to collect data from our learners. It was decided to rely on our client input with respect to information about the knowledge and skills of our learners. We then moved on to divide the task of writing the project plan. I was assigned to write the communication management plan, the risk management plan, and the work breakdown structure of the deliverables.
One more snow day gave me ample time to write my sections of the project plan. I have to admit that I was apprehensive of some of what I needed to write about. Although the concept of project planning is clear in my mind, however, going about its components seemed overwhelming. A lot has been discussed in class and I needed to revisit the resources provided to strengthen my understanding of it. I am very grateful for the richness of the resources provided on the class’s website and I did spend a good deal of time going back and forth on them. The easiest section was writing the communication management plan. Not so easy though since I had to look at it as a network: who will need to say what to whom, and when. Second in order of difficulty was the risk management plan. The risks were easy to configure since, as a team, we have already visited several of them from the start of the project. The challenge in developing the risk management plan was pinning down the value of probability and impact of each risk. I think I placed the risks in the right order; however, I am not so sure about the accuracy of the value I gave each one of them. Next came the work breakdown structure of the deliverables. Writing this section was not so easy. I understand what is meant by deliverables but how to detail every deliverable was somewhat challenging. The way I went about it was to go over the description of the assignments for the project and select what I would consider to be a deliverable. I also looked at the examples of previous projects to make sure I was on the right track.
After completing my assigned sections, I shared them with my teammates, received feedback and made the corrections needed.
Reflections
I see myself as someone who would be interested in leading a team as a project manager. However, experiencing the documentation that goes with it and comparing it to the documentation and process of instructional design, I think I would much rather immerse myself in the ID process where I can give way to creativity. Of course, more exposure might sway the perceptions I have so far of project management. On the other hand, going through this process, I learned about the terminology used in project planning and the multitude of tools available to facilitate the process. I understood how to develop a communication plan, a risk management plan, and a work breakdown structure of deliverables. I dug into analyzing and weighing the elements of each of those sub-categories of the plan. Even though it is not my favorite part of the project, I still enjoy this learning experience that solidifies my knowledge-base.