For this class we had the pleasure of having Rodney Dunican, a former ITEC graduate talk with us on project management. Through his presentation, Rodney really shed some light on what I thought project management was and passed on what I thought was really sage like advice in approaching the mangement of a project.
To me, when I first heard the two words project and management together I pictured a world full of headaches, conflicts, arguments, and frustration -- I'm sure those aspects are part of it from to time however Rodney brought up some positive qualities to balance out my interpretation. He mentioned about how much he enjoyed the comeraderie involved in working with an effective group, friends he sometimes gets to have involved with on his projects, and the celebrations at the end of a project. The human connection seemed to be what kept him so involved in project managing.
In his advice what I really took away as being valuable were his five phases of every project he takes over:
- Initiate = Identify the key stakeholders and those primarily affected by the project and lay out a Statement of Work (SOW) to show everyone involved what needs to be get done, by what time, with how much cost, etc..
- Plan = Go over schedules, timetables, and resource with a kick off meeting.
- Monitor and Execute = conduct team status meetings, task updates, go over change requests, bring up issues, look at risk logs, look where milestones in the project are, sign off on documentation, do Q and As sessions, alpha and beta testing, and report project info to the finance department.
- Close = Celebrate when the project is done to end things on a positive note with everyoone involved
In conclusion, I am really appreciative of Rodney's presentation on what really deals with in magaging a project. It really helped me get a clearer picture of what I could expect if I should ever take lead in future projects and brushed away a lot of negative qualities I usually associated with the job.
